RFC 6487, "A Profile for X.509 PKIX Resource Certificates", February 2012

Note: This RFC has been updated by RFC 7318, RFC 8209

Errata ID: 4080
Status: Verified
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Sean Turner
Date Reported: 2014-08-12
Verifier Name: Alia Atlas
Date Verified: 2014-12-04

Section 6.1.1 says:

This field MAY be omitted.  If present, the value of this field
SHOULD be empty (i.e., NULL), in which case the CA MUST
generate a subject name that is unique in the context of
certificates issued by this CA.  This field is allowed to be
non-empty only for a re-key/reissuance request, and only if the
CA has adopted a policy (in its Certificate Practice Statement
(CPS)) that permits reuse of names in these circumstances.

It should say:

This field
SHOULD be empty (i.e., NULL), in which case the CA MUST
generate a subject name that is unique in the context of
certificates issued by this CA.  This field is allowed to be
non-empty only for a re-key/reissuance request, and only if the
CA has adopted a policy (in its Certificate Practice Statement
(CPS)) that permits reuse of names in these circumstances.

Notes:

Submitted after consultation with the responsible AD and WG chairs.

The subject field included in the PKCS#10 request can't be omitted because the ASN.1 in RFC 2986 doesn’t allow subject to be omitted - there’s no “OPTIONAL” in the ASN.1:

CertificationRequestInfo ::= SEQUENCE {
version INTEGER { v1(0) } (v1,...),
subject Name,
subjectPKInfo SubjectPublicKeyInfo{{ PKInfoAlgorithms }},
attributes [0] Attributes{{ CRIAttributes }}
}

In other words, four fields are included in every certificate request. If there’s no subject field it’s a NULL (see RFC5280 for omitting subjects) and if there’s no attributes it’s an empty sequence. version and subjectPKInfo (subject public key information) are always present.

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