A model for distribution and revocation of certificates

  • Authors:
  • Åsa Hagström;Francesco Parisi-Presicce

  • Affiliations:
  • Lawson Software;Dipartimento di Informatica, Sapienza Università di Roma

  • Venue:
  • ICGT'10 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Graph transformations
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The distribution and revocation of public-key certificates are essential aspects of secure digital communication. As a first step towards a methodology for the development of reliable models, we present a formalism for the specification and reasoning about the distribution and revocation of public keys, based on graphs. The model is distributed in nature; each entity can issue certificates for public keys that it knows, and distribute these to other entities. Each entity has its own public key bases and can derive new certificates from this knowledge. If some of the support for the derived knowledge is revoked, then some of the derived certificates may be revoked as well. Cyclic support is avoided. Graph transformation rules are used for the management of the certificates, and we prove soundness and completeness for our model.