Life-cycle management of X.509 certificates based on LDAP directories

  • Authors:
  • M. Lippert;V. Karatsiolis;A. Wiesmaier;J. Buchmann

  • Affiliations:
  • Technische Universitä/t Darmstadt, Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany Tel.: +49 6151 16 6168/ E-mail: {mal, karatsio, wiesmaie, buchmann}@cdc.informatik.tu-darm ...;Technische Universitä/t Darmstadt, Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany Tel.: +49 6151 16 6168/ E-mail: {mal, karatsio, wiesmaie, buchmann}@cdc.informatik.tu-darm ...;Technische Universitä/t Darmstadt, Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany Tel.: +49 6151 16 6168/ E-mail: {mal, karatsio, wiesmaie, buchmann}@cdc.informatik.tu-darm ...;Technische Universitä/t Darmstadt, Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany Tel.: +49 6151 16 6168/ E-mail: {mal, karatsio, wiesmaie, buchmann}@cdc.informatik.tu-darm ...

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer Security - On IWAP'05
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Companies and organizations employ PKI technology to secure the communication in their intranets and over the internet. The services of authentication, non-repudiation, confidentiality and the transport of authorization information are often supported by X.509 certificates. The synchronization of the certificates' life-cycle with the management of the PKI users is a common problem. We propose a mechanism to achieve this synchronization based on directory services. This enables to transparently update the information provided by the PKI and offers a high potential for automation. The mechanism spares personnel and is less error-prone, since it relies on processes and data that are already established. It reduces the costs to bootstrap and operate the infrastructure. We show a case study on the proposed mechanism that was conducted at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany in order to supply 20 000 students with certificates and keys.