Paper 2017/546

X509CLOUD - FRAMEWORK FOR A UBIQUITOUS PKI

Hitesh Tewari, Arthur Hughes, Stefan Weber, and Tomas Barry

Abstract

The SSL protocol has been widely used for verifying digital identities and to secure Internet traffic since the early days of the web. Although X.509 certificates have been in existence for more than two decades, individual user uptake has been low due to the high cost of issuance and maintenance of such certs. This has led to a situation whereby users are able to verify the identity of an organization or e-commerce retailer via their digital certificate, but organizations have to rely on weak username and password combinations to verify the identity of customers registered with their service. We propose the X509Cloud framework which enables organizations to issue certificates to their users at zero cost, and allows them to securely store and disseminate client certificates using the Bitcoin inspired blockchain protocol. This in turn will enable organizations and individuals to authenticate and to securely communicate with other users on the Internet.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords
X.509PKIBlockchainPoWOTPXMPP
Contact author(s)
htewari @ cs tcd ie
History
2017-06-08: received
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2017/546
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2017/546,
      author = {Hitesh Tewari and Arthur Hughes and Stefan Weber and Tomas Barry},
      title = {X509CLOUD - FRAMEWORK FOR A UBIQUITOUS PKI},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2017/546},
      year = {2017},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/546}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/546}
}
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