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HSM custody and certification practice

How AuthFI's hardware-rooted PKI certifies project signing keys, the policy OIDs it uses, and how to verify a key chains to AuthFI Root CA R1.

AuthFI certifies every signing key it holds for a project. Each key carries a custody certificate that chains to a root whose private key never leaves a hardware security module (HSM). A relying party can check the chain itself, with openssl and the root certificate on this page.

This page is the Certification Practice Statement (CPS) for that chain. It is the address named in the certificatePolicies extension of every custody certificate, under policy 1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.1.

The chain

AuthFI Root CA R1                    offline root, key in an HSM
  └── regional intermediate CA       one per AuthFI region, key in an HSM
        └── custody certificate      one per project signing key

Certificate	Held by	Constraints
AuthFI Root CA R1 (`C=IN, O=AuthFI Private Limited`)	An HSM. The key never leaves it.	Signs intermediate CAs only
Regional intermediate CA	An HSM in its region	Name-constrained to the names that region serves
Custody certificate	The key service of the region	`keyUsage` `digitalSignature`, `CA:FALSE`. Lives 90 days, renewed before it expires

The root signs an intermediate only in a recorded ceremony that needs approval before it runs. Each region has its own intermediate, so a region's certificates cannot vouch for names outside it.

Which keys are certified

Every signing key the key service holds for a project has a custody certificate issued by its region's intermediate:

Token signing keys
SAML signing keys
AI agent token keys
A project's own certificate authority

The certificate is signing-only. It cannot issue certificates and cannot be used for encryption. Project keys at rest are sealed under the region's HSM-held master key. See Keys and secrets for the keys a project has and how to rotate them.

Certificate policies

AuthFI's IANA Private Enterprise Number is 67322. Its certificate policies are defined under the arc 1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.

OID	Policy
`1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.1`	Key held in AuthFI custody, certified under the HSM-rooted chain
`1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.2`	Key resident in a hardware security module (the root and the intermediates)
`1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.3`	Key held by its subject

Custody certificates carry 1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.1, and a CPS qualifier that points to this page.

Verify a key

The JSON Web Key Set (JWKS) of a project at https://acme.authfi.io/.well-known/jwks.json publishes the chain with each key.

JWK member	Value
`x5c`	`[custody certificate, regional intermediate]`, base64 DER, leaf first
`x5t#S256`	Base64url SHA-256 thumbprint of the first certificate in `x5c`

SAML metadata carries the same chain in the X509Data of its signing key.

Check the chain

Save the root certificate from below as root.pem. Then take a key's chain from the JWKS and verify it:

KID="<kid of the key>"
curl -s https://acme.authfi.io/.well-known/jwks.json > jwks.json

for i in 0 1; do
  jq -r --arg kid "$KID" --argjson i "$i" \
    '.keys[] | select(.kid==$kid) | .x5c[$i]' jwks.json \
    | base64 -d | openssl x509 -inform der -out "cert$i.pem"
done
mv cert0.pem leaf.pem && mv cert1.pem intermediate.pem

openssl verify -x509_strict -CAfile root.pem -untrusted intermediate.pem leaf.pem

leaf.pem: OK

Replace <kid of the key> with the kid from the token header you are checking.

Check the thumbprint and the policy

openssl x509 -in leaf.pem -outform der | openssl dgst -sha256 -binary   | openssl base64 -A | tr '+/' '-_' | tr -d '='

openssl x509 -in leaf.pem -noout -text | grep -A2 "Certificate Policies"

The first command prints the value of x5t#S256 for that key. The second prints policy 1.3.6.1.4.1.67322.1.1 and the address of this page.

The root certificate

AuthFI Root CA R1 is a public trust anchor. Before you trust a copy, compare its SHA-256 fingerprint with the one below.

Field	Value
Subject and issuer	`C=IN, O=AuthFI Private Limited, CN=AuthFI Root CA R1`
Valid	24 October 2026 to 24 October 2051
SHA-256 fingerprint	`D9:C2:A9:C7:0A:A8:53:AC:01:D3:B2:E3:D4:50:51:28:AB:28:E2:78:18:27:79:5D:25:C9:0A:CF:1D:BA:1B:54`

Print the fingerprint of your copy:

openssl x509 -in root.pem -noout -fingerprint -sha256

sha256 Fingerprint=D9:C2:A9:C7:0A:A8:53:AC:01:D3:B2:E3:D4:50:51:28:AB:28:E2:78:18:27:79:5D:25:C9:0A:CF:1D:BA:1B:54

Next steps

Keys and secrets

The keys a project has, and how to rotate or disable one.

Tokens and claims

Which key signs each kind of token.