Certificate authority

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that issues digital certificates for use by other parties. It is an example of a trusted third party. CAs are characteristic of many public key infrastructure (PKI) schemes.

There are many commercial CAs that charge for their services. There are also several providers issuing digital certificates to the public at no cost. Institutions and governments may have their own CAs.

Contents

[edit] Issuing a certificate

 This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help clarify the article; suggestions may be found on the talk page. (February 2009)

A CA issues digital certificates that contain a public key and the identity of the owner. The matching private key is not similarly made available publicly, but kept secret by the end user who generated the key pair. The certificate is also an attestation by the CA that the public key contained in the certificate belongs to the person, organization, server or other entity noted in the certificate. A CA's obligation in such schemes is to verify an applicant's credentials, so that users and relying parties can trust the information in the CA's certificates. CAs use a variety of standards and tests to do so.

If the user trusts the CA and can verify the CA's signature, then he can also verify that a certain public key does indeed belong to whoever is identified in the certificate.

[edit] Subversion of CA

If the CA can be subverted, then the security of the entire system is lost for each user for whom the CA is attesting a link between a public key and an identity.

For example, suppose an attacker, Mallory (using the Alice and Bob convention), manages to get a CA to issue to her a certificate that claims to represent Alice. That is, the certificate would publicly state that it represents Alice, and might include other information about Alice. Some of the information about Alice, such as her employer name, might be true, increasing the certificate's credibility. Mallory, however, would have the all-important private key associated with the certificate. Mallory could then use the certificate to send digitally signed email to Bob, tricking Bob into believing that the email was from Alice. Bob might even respond with encrypted email, believing that it could only be read by Alice, when Mallory is actually able to decrypt it using the private key.

A notable case of CA subversion like this occurred in 2001, when the certificate authority Verisign issued two certificates to a person claiming to represent Microsoft. The certificates have the name "Microsoft Corporation", so could be used to spoof someone into believing that updates to Microsoft software came from Microsoft when they actually did not. The fraud was detected in early 2001. Microsoft and Verisign took steps to limit the impact of the problem.[1] [2]

[edit] Security

The problem of assuring correctness of match between data and entity when the data are presented to the CA (perhaps over an electronic network), and when the credentials of the person/company/program asking for a certificate are likewise presented, is difficult. This is why commercial CAs often use a combination of authentication techniques including leveraging government bureaus, the payment infrastructure, third parties' databases and services, and custom heuristics. In some enterprise systems, local forms of authentication such as Kerberos can be used to obtain a certificate which can in turn be used by external relying parties. Notaries are required in some cases to personally know the party whose signature is being notarized; this is a higher standard than is reached by many CAs. According to the American Bar Association outline on Online Transaction Management the primary points of US Federal and State statutes enacted regarding digital signatures has been to "prevent conflicting and overly burdensome local regulation and to establish that electronic writings satisfy the traditional requirements associated with paper documents." Further the US E-Sign statute and the suggested UETA code help ensure that:

  1. a signature, contract or other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form; and
  2. a contract relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely because an electronic signature or electronic record was used in its formation.

In large-scale deployments, Alice may not be familiar with Bob's certificate authority (perhaps they each have a different CA server), so Bob's certificate may also include his CA's public key signed by a different CA2, which is presumably recognizable by Alice. This process typically leads to a hierarchy or mesh of CAs and CA certificates.

[edit] Providers

Worldwide, the certificate authority business is fragmented, with national or regional providers dominating their home market. This is because many uses of digital certificates, such as for legally binding digital signatures, are linked to local law, regulations, and accreditation schemes for certificate authorities.

However, the market for SSL certificates, a kind of certificate used for website security, is largely held by a small number of multinational companies. This market has significant barriers to entry since new providers must undergo annual security audits (such as WebTrust for Certification Authorities) to be included in the list of web browser trusted authorities. More than 50 root certificates are trusted in the most popular web browser versions. A 2007 market share report from Security Space as of September of that year determined that VeriSign and its acquisitions (which include Thawte and more recently Geotrust) have a 57.6% share of the certificate authority market, followed by Comodo (largely through Instant SSL) (8.3%), and GoDaddy (6.4%).

[edit] See also

Cryptography portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Verisign, Inc. (2001-01-31). "Jan 2001 - Advisory from VeriSign, Inc.". http://www.verisign.com/support/advisories/authenticodefraud.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-02. 
  2. ^ Microsoft, Inc. (2001-03-22). "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-017". http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-017.mspx. Retrieved on 2008-12-02. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority"
Personal tools