Article 45 of the eIDAS Directive Unveils the need to implement the X.509 4-cornered trust model for the WebPKI
Abstract
Article 45 of the new eIDAS Directive (eIDAS 2.0) has caused significant debate on the Internet as it gives European governments the power to make EU-certificated web certificates accepted without the approval of web browsers/OS, which are considered to be the current gatekeepers of the WebPKI ecosystem. This paper goes beyond the current debate between the WebPKI gatekeepers and the European Commission (EC) about the implications of Article 45. It shows how both approaches do not provide full protection to web users. We propose a better approach that Europe can follow to regulate web X.509 certificates: Rather than regulating the issuance of web X.509 certificates, the EC can play the role of a validator that recommends the acceptance of certificates at the web scale.