Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) describes the policies, standards, and software that control or manipulate certificates and public and private keys. In practice, PKI refers to a system of digital certificates, certificate authorities (CA), and other registries that check and verify the legitimacy of the parties involved in an electronic transaction. Public key certificates, often called certificates, authenticate and secure data exchange on the Internet, Extranet, and Intranet. Certificate Authority (CA) is the issuer and signer of certificates are known as Certificate Authority (CA). A public-key certificate is a digitally signed statement that binds the value of a public key to the subject’s identity (person, device, and service) holding the corresponding private key. By signing the certificate, the CA can verify that the private key corresponding to the public key on the certificate is owned by the subject specified in the certificate.
Certificates can be issued for a variety of purposes, such as Web user authentication, Web server authentication, secure e-mail using Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), IP Security ), Secure Sockets Layer/Transaction Layer Security (SSL/TLS), and code signing.
Public key infrastructure has the following three elements; a certificate authority (CA) which serves as the central service for authenticating identities within a network. The certificate directory that records accepted requests and revoked certificates, and lastly the key recovery server which provides redundancy for organizations in for disaster recovery in the event keys are lost.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to encrypt your data in transit. It helps protect the identity of those communicating and makes it so only the correct individual can decrypt the communication via use of certificates. Certificates are backed by a number of security measures including time stamps, registration, and validation. PKI uses two different keys – a public and private key. The public key is shared but the private key is never shared.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) issues a digital certificate to secure in transit sensitive data. PKI certificate provides an attestation that it belongs to specific company. The elements that are part of PKI are Certificate authority, Registration authority, Certificate database, and Certificate policy. Certificate authority has the responsibility of issuing the digital certificate. Registration authority verifies the company that is requesting the digital certificate. Certificate Database hold the information of the certificates. Certificate policy defines the procedures of PKI.
One of the main things that I took away from this reading were the major elements of a Microsoft Public Key Infrastructure : the certification authorities, certificate directory, and key recovery server. I’m curious if other companies implement their own public key infrastructure and how it compares to Microsoft.
I like how you briefly summarized the article and its major points without making your analysis too in depth. Your post captured the three important entities of Microsoft Public Key Infrastructure and eliminated any potential to confuse a reader.
The major key takeaway from reading the article is that public key cryptography pivot on a public and private key pair to encrypt and decrypt content. In that regard, the keys are mathematically connected with each other, and therefore content encrypted by using one of the keys can only be decrypted by making use of the other. It seems interesting to know from the article that the private key is being kept secret and the public key is particularly contained in a binary certificate, and the certificate is published to a database that can be accessed by all authorized users with less difficulties. Hence, the X.509 public key infrastructure (PKI) standard determines the requirements for strong public key certificates. A certificate is a signed data structure that binds a public key to a person, computer, or organization.
The introduction of the certificate authority helps to eliminate the man-in-the-middle attacks. Without the CA anyone can intervene in the original communication path and pretend to be the recipient. If we take the Alice and bob example, let’s say Bob is sending Alice his public key, and say Steve is an intruder pretending to be Bob. Steve can send Alice his version of Bob’s public key and Alice would not know that it was not Bob’s public key. This is essentially what the CA solves. And the x.509 defines the formats of the PKI certificates.
I agree with you that the introduction of Certificate Authorities helps eliminate man-in-the-middle attacks. With PKI, it is reasonably certain that the certificate and the public key it contains have not been altered. a PKI provides a service for authenticating the identity of individuals, computers, and other entities in a network.
Hi Dhaval,
I am in agreement with your explanation about certificate authority to reduce the use of man in the middle attack. In spite of this as long as there are people who do not want other people to see what they are sending, there will probably be those who want to get at that information. These people, called attackers, are always searching for some “short-cut” to encryption algorithms so that they do not have to do an exhaustive search which might take months or years. This situation is a lot like a one-way street. Anyone can go in one direction (i.e., encrypt something using a public key), but people cannot decrypt something unless they possess the private key. Attackers instead try to find a hidden street that runs parallel to the main street so that they can get to the message without having the key and without spending an inordinate amount of time trying to establish it.
It interested me a public key infrastructure consists of a certificate authority, registration authority, and key recovery server as elements. The certificate authority proves the ownership of a public key. The registration authority is a certificate enrollment for PKI.
Key recovery server saves encrypted private keys in the certificate database for recovery after loss.
Public key infrastructure utilizes users’ private and public keys, along with trusted third-parties called a certification authority, in order to encrypt and decrypt content while allowing the users to be reasonably certain of each other’s true identity. According to the articles, a typical PKI consists of the following elements: Certification Authority, Registration Authority, Certificate Database, Certificate Store, and Key Archival Server. A typical Microsoft PKI includes a Certificate Authority, Certificate Directory, and Key Recovery Server.
Nice discussion! Aside of the elements, some PKI benefits are to authenticating the identity of people via the internet, provide privacy of messages by minimizing gate risk, and ensure the integrity of electronic communications by minimizing the risk of them being altered or tampered with in transit without the recipient being aware.
One takeaway I had from this reading was details on the role of a key archival server. In last week’s reading, there was a lot of detail on basic PKI, but not a lot of mention on the DR portion. The key archival server saves encrypted private keys for recovery purposes; if this did not exist, anything encrypted at-rest (or even in transit) would be totally lost. It is important for organizations to have disaster recovery measures enabling long term availability of private keys.
One important point I recognized from the reading material is that public key cryptography uses key pairs to encrypt and decrypt content. An individual who intends to communicate securely with others can distribute the public key, but must keep the private key secret. In the example Bob cannot determine whether the key he uses for encryption belongs to Alice. a PKI consists of software and hardware elements that trusted third parties can use to establish the integrity and ownership of a public key. a PKI provides services that authenticate the identity of individuals, computers, and other entities in a network. With a PKI, it is reasonably certain that the certificate and the public key it contains have not been altered.
Public Key Infrastructure is built around the underlisted components and procedures for managing public key pairs.
1. A Certificate Authority (CA) issues an entity’s certificate and acts as a trusted component within a private PKI. Any certificate issued by the CA is trusted by all entities that trust the CA.
2. Certificate – A digital document signed by a CA and used to prove the owner of a public key within a PKI.
3. Registration authority (RA) – Receives certificate signing requests and verifies the identity of an end entity.
4. Validation Authority (VA) – A VA allows an entity to check that a certificate has not been revoked.
5. Secure storage – A method of securely storing a private key is required for both the Certificate Authority (CA) and end entity to protect the key from compromise.
6. Public/Private key pair – A private key and associated public key are mathematically related.
One key point that I learned from these two articles is the importance of hashing when the certificate authority is sending the their public key and and certificate to the organization requesting them. This hash is what allows the organization to verify the identity of the certificate authority. This verification is done by decrypting the hashed certificate with the CA’s public key, hashing the certificate again independently, and then comparing the two hashes. If the hashes match, the organization requesting the certificate knows that the public key and certificate have not been altered.
Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI consists of the following main elements: a certificate authority (CA), registration authority, certificate database, certificate store, and key archival server. The CA is the heart of PKI, as it is the root of trust that enables and allows for the authentication of identities. An RA is also known as a subordinate CA, and issues specific certificates as permitted by the root CA. The certificate database records certificate requests, one issued, and those revoked on the CA or RA. A certificate store saves issued, pending, and rejected certificates on local machines. Lastly, the key archival server saves encrypted private keys so that they can be retrieved in the event that they are lost. Lastly, it is important to note that a certificate is “a signed data structure which binds a public key to an entity.” (a person/machine/ or organization)
Public key infrastructure (PKI) governs the issuance of digital certificates to protect sensitive data. It is the process of creating, distributing, managing, storing and revoking certificates all encapsulated under PKI. It’s all based on trust, and this trust is created by a certificate authority.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) describes the policies, standards, and software that control or manipulate certificates and public and private keys. In practice, PKI refers to a system of digital certificates, certificate authorities (CA), and other registries that check and verify the legitimacy of the parties involved in an electronic transaction. Public key certificates, often called certificates, authenticate and secure data exchange on the Internet, Extranet, and Intranet. Certificate Authority (CA) is the issuer and signer of certificates are known as Certificate Authority (CA). A public-key certificate is a digitally signed statement that binds the value of a public key to the subject’s identity (person, device, and service) holding the corresponding private key. By signing the certificate, the CA can verify that the private key corresponding to the public key on the certificate is owned by the subject specified in the certificate.
Certificates can be issued for a variety of purposes, such as Web user authentication, Web server authentication, secure e-mail using Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), IP Security ), Secure Sockets Layer/Transaction Layer Security (SSL/TLS), and code signing.
Hi Zijuan,
Great summary of public key infrastructure. I’m curious if other companies implement their own version of this, and how they compare to Microsoft.
Thanks for sharing your post!
Best,
Andrew
Public key infrastructure has the following three elements; a certificate authority (CA) which serves as the central service for authenticating identities within a network. The certificate directory that records accepted requests and revoked certificates, and lastly the key recovery server which provides redundancy for organizations in for disaster recovery in the event keys are lost.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to encrypt your data in transit. It helps protect the identity of those communicating and makes it so only the correct individual can decrypt the communication via use of certificates. Certificates are backed by a number of security measures including time stamps, registration, and validation. PKI uses two different keys – a public and private key. The public key is shared but the private key is never shared.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) issues a digital certificate to secure in transit sensitive data. PKI certificate provides an attestation that it belongs to specific company. The elements that are part of PKI are Certificate authority, Registration authority, Certificate database, and Certificate policy. Certificate authority has the responsibility of issuing the digital certificate. Registration authority verifies the company that is requesting the digital certificate. Certificate Database hold the information of the certificates. Certificate policy defines the procedures of PKI.
One of the main things that I took away from this reading were the major elements of a Microsoft Public Key Infrastructure : the certification authorities, certificate directory, and key recovery server. I’m curious if other companies implement their own public key infrastructure and how it compares to Microsoft.
Hi Andrew,
I like how you briefly summarized the article and its major points without making your analysis too in depth. Your post captured the three important entities of Microsoft Public Key Infrastructure and eliminated any potential to confuse a reader.
-Mike
The major key takeaway from reading the article is that public key cryptography pivot on a public and private key pair to encrypt and decrypt content. In that regard, the keys are mathematically connected with each other, and therefore content encrypted by using one of the keys can only be decrypted by making use of the other. It seems interesting to know from the article that the private key is being kept secret and the public key is particularly contained in a binary certificate, and the certificate is published to a database that can be accessed by all authorized users with less difficulties. Hence, the X.509 public key infrastructure (PKI) standard determines the requirements for strong public key certificates. A certificate is a signed data structure that binds a public key to a person, computer, or organization.
The introduction of the certificate authority helps to eliminate the man-in-the-middle attacks. Without the CA anyone can intervene in the original communication path and pretend to be the recipient. If we take the Alice and bob example, let’s say Bob is sending Alice his public key, and say Steve is an intruder pretending to be Bob. Steve can send Alice his version of Bob’s public key and Alice would not know that it was not Bob’s public key. This is essentially what the CA solves. And the x.509 defines the formats of the PKI certificates.
Hi Dhaval,
I agree with you that the introduction of Certificate Authorities helps eliminate man-in-the-middle attacks. With PKI, it is reasonably certain that the certificate and the public key it contains have not been altered. a PKI provides a service for authenticating the identity of individuals, computers, and other entities in a network.
Hi Dhaval,
I am in agreement with your explanation about certificate authority to reduce the use of man in the middle attack. In spite of this as long as there are people who do not want other people to see what they are sending, there will probably be those who want to get at that information. These people, called attackers, are always searching for some “short-cut” to encryption algorithms so that they do not have to do an exhaustive search which might take months or years. This situation is a lot like a one-way street. Anyone can go in one direction (i.e., encrypt something using a public key), but people cannot decrypt something unless they possess the private key. Attackers instead try to find a hidden street that runs parallel to the main street so that they can get to the message without having the key and without spending an inordinate amount of time trying to establish it.
It interested me a public key infrastructure consists of a certificate authority, registration authority, and key recovery server as elements. The certificate authority proves the ownership of a public key. The registration authority is a certificate enrollment for PKI.
Key recovery server saves encrypted private keys in the certificate database for recovery after loss.
Public key infrastructure utilizes users’ private and public keys, along with trusted third-parties called a certification authority, in order to encrypt and decrypt content while allowing the users to be reasonably certain of each other’s true identity. According to the articles, a typical PKI consists of the following elements: Certification Authority, Registration Authority, Certificate Database, Certificate Store, and Key Archival Server. A typical Microsoft PKI includes a Certificate Authority, Certificate Directory, and Key Recovery Server.
Hi Patrick,
Nice discussion! Aside of the elements, some PKI benefits are to authenticating the identity of people via the internet, provide privacy of messages by minimizing gate risk, and ensure the integrity of electronic communications by minimizing the risk of them being altered or tampered with in transit without the recipient being aware.
One takeaway I had from this reading was details on the role of a key archival server. In last week’s reading, there was a lot of detail on basic PKI, but not a lot of mention on the DR portion. The key archival server saves encrypted private keys for recovery purposes; if this did not exist, anything encrypted at-rest (or even in transit) would be totally lost. It is important for organizations to have disaster recovery measures enabling long term availability of private keys.
One important point I recognized from the reading material is that public key cryptography uses key pairs to encrypt and decrypt content. An individual who intends to communicate securely with others can distribute the public key, but must keep the private key secret. In the example Bob cannot determine whether the key he uses for encryption belongs to Alice. a PKI consists of software and hardware elements that trusted third parties can use to establish the integrity and ownership of a public key. a PKI provides services that authenticate the identity of individuals, computers, and other entities in a network. With a PKI, it is reasonably certain that the certificate and the public key it contains have not been altered.
Public Key Infrastructure is built around the underlisted components and procedures for managing public key pairs.
1. A Certificate Authority (CA) issues an entity’s certificate and acts as a trusted component within a private PKI. Any certificate issued by the CA is trusted by all entities that trust the CA.
2. Certificate – A digital document signed by a CA and used to prove the owner of a public key within a PKI.
3. Registration authority (RA) – Receives certificate signing requests and verifies the identity of an end entity.
4. Validation Authority (VA) – A VA allows an entity to check that a certificate has not been revoked.
5. Secure storage – A method of securely storing a private key is required for both the Certificate Authority (CA) and end entity to protect the key from compromise.
6. Public/Private key pair – A private key and associated public key are mathematically related.
One key point that I learned from these two articles is the importance of hashing when the certificate authority is sending the their public key and and certificate to the organization requesting them. This hash is what allows the organization to verify the identity of the certificate authority. This verification is done by decrypting the hashed certificate with the CA’s public key, hashing the certificate again independently, and then comparing the two hashes. If the hashes match, the organization requesting the certificate knows that the public key and certificate have not been altered.
Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI consists of the following main elements: a certificate authority (CA), registration authority, certificate database, certificate store, and key archival server. The CA is the heart of PKI, as it is the root of trust that enables and allows for the authentication of identities. An RA is also known as a subordinate CA, and issues specific certificates as permitted by the root CA. The certificate database records certificate requests, one issued, and those revoked on the CA or RA. A certificate store saves issued, pending, and rejected certificates on local machines. Lastly, the key archival server saves encrypted private keys so that they can be retrieved in the event that they are lost. Lastly, it is important to note that a certificate is “a signed data structure which binds a public key to an entity.” (a person/machine/ or organization)
Public key infrastructure (PKI) governs the issuance of digital certificates to protect sensitive data. It is the process of creating, distributing, managing, storing and revoking certificates all encapsulated under PKI. It’s all based on trust, and this trust is created by a certificate authority.