[rst]

The bug is being publicly described as specific to the implementation of a particular class of cryptographic primitives (ECC). If that's accurate, simplifying the certificate data format (unnecessarily messy though it may be) wouldn't do much to mitigate this particular issue.

[tptacek]

To the extent it's X.509 allowing curve parameters to be specified alongside signatures and public keys, this is indeed a case where all the extra joinery in X.509 is creating exploitable complexity, and the point 'api is making is well taken.