How x509chain works in C#? What is purpose of using it? - asp.net

Question

I have implement client certificate based security in C#. Everything is clear and working good for me. I was finding perfect way to verify client certificate on server side, through which i came to x509Chain. But i am not clear about How it exactly works? How can we configure it? Is it secure way to verify certificate?
Any help will be Appreciated! Thanks!
Note: By theoretical point of view, i have read my documents on that but i am not sure for it's functionality. Please provide practical example and guide for that.

Answer 1

A bit of theory I wrote some time ago: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3147.certificate-chaining-engine-cce.aspx
This article describes what is certificate chaining engine (CCE) and how it works in Windows in general. It is based on RFC5280 and Microsoft-specific implementation of certificate chaining engine. .NET uses native CryptoAPI functions, so X509Chain behaves in the same way as in native CryptoAPI.

Answer 2

The X509Chain does not work reliably for scenarios where you do not have the root certificate in the trusted CA store on the machine.
Others will advocate using bouncy castle. I wanted to avoid bringing in another library just for this task, so I wrote my own.
As see in RFC3280 Section 4.1 the certificate is a ASN1 encoded structure, and at it's base level is comprised of only 3 elements.
The "TBS" (to be signed) certificate
The signature algorithm
and the signature value
Certificate ::= SEQUENCE {
tbsCertificate TBSCertificate,
signatureAlgorithm AlgorithmIdentifier,
signatureValue BIT STRING
}
C# actually has a handy tool for parsing ASN1, the System.Formats.Asn1.AsnDecoder.
Using this, we can extract these 3 elements from the certificate to verify the chain.
The first step was extracting the certificate signature, since the X509Certificate2 class does not expose this information and it is necessary for the purpose of certificate validation.
Example code to extract the signature value part:
public static byte[] Signature(
this X509Certificate2 certificate,
AsnEncodingRules encodingRules = AsnEncodingRules.BER)
{
var signedData = certificate.RawDataMemory;
AsnDecoder.ReadSequence(
signedData.Span,
encodingRules,
out var offset,
out var length,
out _
);
var certificateSpan = signedData.Span[offset..(offset + length)];
AsnDecoder.ReadSequence(
certificateSpan,
encodingRules,
out var tbsOffset,
out var tbsLength,
out _
);
var offsetSpan = certificateSpan[(tbsOffset + tbsLength)..];
AsnDecoder.ReadSequence(
offsetSpan,
encodingRules,
out var algOffset,
out var algLength,
out _
);
return AsnDecoder.ReadBitString(
offsetSpan[(algOffset + algLength)..],
encodingRules,
out _,
out _
);
}
The next step is to extract the TBS certificate. This is the original data which was signed.
example code to extract the TBS certificate data:
public static ReadOnlySpan<byte> TbsCertificate(
this X509Certificate2 certificate,
AsnEncodingRules encodingRules = AsnEncodingRules.BER)
{
var signedData = certificate.RawDataMemory;
AsnDecoder.ReadSequence(
signedData.Span,
encodingRules,
out var offset,
out var length,
out _
);
var certificateSpan = signedData.Span[offset..(offset + length)];
AsnDecoder.ReadSequence(
certificateSpan,
encodingRules,
out var tbsOffset,
out var tbsLength,
out _
);
// include ASN1 4 byte header to get WHOLE TBS Cert
return certificateSpan.Slice(tbsOffset - 4, tbsLength + 4);
}
You may notice that when extracting the TBS certiifcate I needed to include the ASN1 header in the data, this is because the signature of the TBS Certificate INCLUDES this data (this annoyed me for a while).
For the first time in history, the Microsoft does not impede us with their API design, and we are able to obtain the Signature Algorithm directly from the X509Certificate2 object. Then we just need to decide to what extend we are going to implement different hash algorithms.
var signature = signed.Signature();
var tbs = signed.TbsCertificate();
var alg = signed.SignatureAlgorithm;
// https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-gpnap/a48b02b2-2a10-4eb0-bed4-1807a6d2f5ad
switch (alg)
{
case { Value: var value } when value?.StartsWith("1.2.840.113549.1.1.") ?? false:
return signedBy.GetRSAPublicKey()?.VerifyData(
tbs,
signature,
value switch {
"1.2.840.113549.1.1.11" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA256,
"1.2.840.113549.1.1.12" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA384,
"1.2.840.113549.1.1.13" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA512,
_ => throw new UnsupportedSignatureAlgorithm(alg)
},
RSASignaturePadding.Pkcs1
) ?? false;
case { Value: var value } when value?.StartsWith("1.2.840.10045.4.3.") ?? false:
return signedBy.GetECDsaPublicKey()?.VerifyData(
tbs,
signature,
value switch
{
"1.2.840.10045.4.3.2" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA256,
"1.2.840.10045.4.3.3" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA384,
"1.2.840.10045.4.3.4" => HashAlgorithmName.SHA512,
_ => throw new UnsupportedSignatureAlgorithm(alg)
},
DSASignatureFormat.Rfc3279DerSequence
) ?? false;
default: throw new UnsupportedSignatureAlgorithm(alg);
}
As shown in the code above, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-gpnap/a48b02b2-2a10-4eb0-bed4-1807a6d2f5ad is a good resource to see the mapping of algorithms and OIDs.
Another thing you should be aware of is that there are some articles out there that claim that for elliptical curve algorithms, microsoft expects a R,S formatted key instead of a DER formatted key. I tried to convert the key to this format but it ultimately didn't work. What I discovered was that it was necessary to use the DSASignatureFormat.Rfc3279DerSequence parameter.
Additional certificate checks, like "not before" and "not after", or CRL and OCSP checks can be done in addition to the chain verification.