Design Aspects in a Public Key Infrastructure for Network Applications Security
Abstract
Computer security is a vitally important consideration in modern systems. Typically the military and banking areas have had detailed security systems. This paper will concentrate on an interesting area of software security based on public key cryptographic technology. The Public Key system makes it possible for two parties to communicate securely without either having to know or trust the other party. This is possible because a third party that both the other parties trust identifies them and certifies that their keys are genuine. This third party is called the Certification Authority, or CA. CA guarantees that they are who they claim to be. The CA does this by registering each user's identification information and issuing them with a set of Private keys and a set of Public Key Certificates. A worldwide Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that supports international government and state policies/regulations will not be available in the near future. In the meantime organizations and corporations can utilize this security technology to satisfy current business needs. Many organizations are choosing to manage their own Certificate Authority (CA) instead of outsourcing this function to a third party (i.e. Verisign, Thawte, GTE CyberTrust GlobalSign). Our paper tries to analyse the main design issues for a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), needed to secure the most important network applications: Web access authentication and server-client communication confidentiality, VPN over Internet implementation secure (signed) document and e-mail interchange.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADP010879
Entities
People
- Aurel Serb
- Victor V. Patriciu
Organizations
- Le Quy Don Technical University