I can not find exactly what is the meaning and what is used for these fields in certificate..One of the fields is issuer name which contain a lot of fiels. Some of them are distinguished name qualifier, commonName and domainComponent, so can anyone explain me what is used for these field and what is their meaning.. I think that commonName is unique for everyone and if is the name of CA root, but I am not sure is it ok. Thanks in advance.

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Best Answer


These are X.520 relative distinguished name (RDN) attributes. Check RFC 1617 for more details and naming guidelines.

The common name depends on the context. For a server it is the host name, for a person the first and last name, for an IoT device it might be a device name, etc.

The domain component is a part of a host name, e.g. google from mail.google.com. I have never seen this in a certificate. It might be used to restrict a certificate to a part of the host name.

The distinguished name qualifier is a global value for entities common from the same source. Same source = same qualifier. It can be used to differentiate distinguished names from different sources using the same distinguished name otherwise in a CA. So it is an attribute to differentiate the source. Example employee John Doe from company A and John Doe from company B. Both companies merge. The CA can use the qualifier company B for the second John Doe. If you have IoT sensors to manage from 3 companies, here maybe 2 qualifiers for the IoT certificates could be used. But I have never seen a certificate using it.

But all definitions are flexible and if you have a reason for your usecase to find a better match, you can apply your rules.

See RF 4519.