Search

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has revolutionized our daily routines, fostering interconnectedness and convenience. However, this interconnected network also presents significant security challenges concerning authentication and data integrity. Traditional security measures, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), encounter limitations when applied to resource-constrained IoT devices. This paper proposes a novel decentralized PKI system tailored specifically for IoT environments to address these challenges. Our approach introduces a unique "zone" architecture overseen by zone masters, facilitating efficient certificate management within IoT clusters while reducing the risk of single points of failure. Furthermore, we prioritize the use of lightweight cryptographic techniques, including Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), to optimize performance without compromising security. Through comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed solution in bolstering the security and efficiency of IoT ecosystems. This contribution underlines the critical need for innovative security solutions in IoT deployments and presents a scalable framework to meet the evolving demands of IoT environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet applications rely on Secure Socket Layer (SSL)/Transport Security Layer (TSL) certifications to establish secure communication. However, the centralized nature of certificate authorities (CAs) poses a risk, as malicious third parties could exploit the CA to issue fake certificates to malicious web servers, potentially compromising the privacy and integrity of user data. In this paper, we demonstrate how the utilization of decentralized certificate verification with blockchain technology can effectively address and mitigate such attacks. We present a decentralized public key infrastructure (PKI) based on a distributed trust model, e.g., Web of Trust (WoT) and blockchain technologies, to overcome vulnerabilities like single points of failure and to prevent tampering with existing certificates. In addition, our infrastructure establishes a trusted key-ring network that decouples the authentication process from CAs in order to enhance secure certificate issuance and accelerate the revocation process. Furthermore, as a proof of concept, we present the implementation of our proposed system in the Ethereum blockchain, confirming that the proposed framework meets the five identified requirements. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed system in practice, albeit with additional overhead compared to conventional PKIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet applications rely on Secure Socket Layer (SSL)/Transport Security Layer (TSL) certifications to establish secure communication. However, the centralized nature of certificate authorities (CAs) poses a risk, as malicious third parties could exploit the CA to issue fake certificates to malicious web servers, potentially compromising the privacy and integrity of user data. In this paper, we demonstrate how the utilization of decentralized certificate verification with blockchain technology can effectively address and mitigate such attacks. We present a decentralized public key infrastructure (PKI) based on a distributed trust model, e.g., Web of Trust (WoT) and blockchain technologies, to overcome vulnerabilities like single points of failure and to prevent tampering with existing certificates. In addition, our infrastructure establishes a trusted key-ring network that decouples the authentication process from CAs in order to enhance secure certificate issuance and accelerate the revocation process. Furthermore, as a proof of concept, we present the implementation of our proposed system in the Ethereum blockchain, confirming that the proposed framework meets the five identified requirements. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed system in practice, albeit with additional overhead compared to conventional PKIs.

This research investigates the intricacies of X.509 certificates within a comprehensive corporate infrastructure. Spanning over two decades, the examined enterprise has heavily depended on its internal certificate authority and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to uphold its data and systems security. With the broad application of these certificates, from personal identification on smart cards to device and workstation authentication via Trusted Platform Modules (TPM), our study seeks to address a pertinent question on how prevalent are weak RSA keys within such a vast internal certificate repository. Previous research focused primarily on key sets publicly accessible from TLS and SSH servers or PGP key repositories. On the contrary, our investigation provides insights into the private domain of an enterprise, introducing new dimensions to this problem. Among our considerations are the trustworthiness of hardware and software solutions in generating keys and the consequential implications of identified vulnerabilities on organizational risk management. The obtained results can contribute to enhancing security strategies in enterprises.

Digital certificates are regarded as the most secure and scalable way of implementing authentication services in the Internet today. They are used by most popular security protocols, including Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS). The lifecycle management of digital certificates relies on centralized Certification Authority (CA)-based Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs). However, the implementation of PKIs and certificate lifecycle management procedures in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments presents some challenges, mainly due to the high resource consumption that they imply and the lack of trust in the centralized CAs. This paper identifies and describes the main challenges to implement certificate-based public key cryptography in IIoT environments and it surveys the alternative approaches proposed so far in the literature to address these challenges. Most proposals rely on the introduction of a Trusted Third Party to aid the IIoT devices in tasks that exceed their capacity. The proposed alternatives are complementary and their application depends on the specific challenge to solve, the application scenario, and the capacities of the involved IIoT devices. This paper revisits all these alternatives in light of industrial communication models, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and providing an in-depth comparative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry 4.0 heavily builds on massive deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices to monitor every aspect of the manufacturing processes. Since the data gathered by these devices impact the output of critical processes, identity management and communications security are critical aspects, which commonly rely on the deployment of X.509 certificates. Nevertheless, the provisioning and management of individual certificates for a high number of IIoT devices involves important challenges. In this paper, we present a solution to improve the management of digital certificates in IIoT environments, which relies on partially delegating the certificate enrolment process to an edge server. However, in order to preserve end-to-end security, private keys are never delegated. Additionally, for the protection of the communications between the edge server and the IIoT devices, an approach based on Identity Based Cryptography is deployed. The proposed solution considers also the issuance of very short-lived certificates, which reduces the risk of using expired or compromised certificates, and avoids the necessity of implementing performance expensive protocols such as Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). The proposed solution has been successfully tested as an efficient identity management solution for IIoT environments in a real industrial environment.

Digital certificates are regarded as the most secure and scalable way of implementing authentication services in the Internet today. They are used by most popular security protocols, including Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS). The lifecycle management of digital certificates relies on centralized Certification Authority (CA)-based Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs). However, the implementation of PKIs and certificate lifecycle management procedures in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments presents some challenges, mainly due to the high resource consumption that they imply and the lack of trust in the centralized CAs. This paper identifies and describes the main challenges to implement certificate-based public key cryptography in IIoT environments and it surveys the alternative approaches proposed so far in the literature to address these challenges. Most proposals rely on the introduction of a Trusted Third Party to aid the IIoT devices in tasks that exceed their capacity. The proposed alternatives are complementary and their application depends on the specific challenge to solve, the application scenario, and the capacities of the involved IIoT devices. This paper revisits all these alternatives in light of industrial communication models, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and providing an in-depth comparative analysis.

Public key infrastructure (PKI) plays a fundamental role in securing the infrastructure of the Internet through the certification of public keys used in asymmetric encryption. It is an industry standard used by both public and private entities that costs a lot of resources to maintain and secure. On the other hand, identity-based cryptography removes the need for certificates, which in turn lowers the cost. In this work, we present a practical implementation of a hybrid PKI that can issue new identity-based cryptographic keys for authentication purposes while bootstrapping trust with existing certificate authorities. We provide a set of utilities to generate and use such keys within the context of an identity-based environment as well as an external environment (i.e., without root trust to the private key generator). Key revocation is solved through our custom naming design which currently supports a few scenarios (e.g., expire by date, expire by year and valid for year). Our implementation offers a high degree of interoperability by incorporating X.509 standards into identity-based cryptography (IBC) compared to existing works on hybrid PKI–IBC systems. The utilities provided are minimalist and can be integrated with existing tools such as the Enterprise Java Bean Certified Authority (EJBCA).

PDF Encryption is a content security mechanism developed and used by Adobe in their products. In this paper, we have checked a theoretical security level of a variant that uses public key infrastructure and X.509 certificates. We have described a basis of this mechanism and we have performed a simple security analysis. Then, we have showed possible tweaks and security improvements. At the end, we have given some recommendations that can improve security of a content secured with PDF Encryption based on X.509 certificates. Keywords: DRM, cryptography, security level, PDF Encryption, Adobe, X.509

TLS Certificates are the backbone of the World Wide Web's Public Key Infrastructure. In case of a compromise of private cryptographic keys, it is vital to have the ability to revoke certificates before their validity period expires. This paper describes and contrasts the two major mechanisms for certificate revocation - Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) and Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). It is found that modern web clients and browsers such as Google Chrome do not perform stringent checking of certificate revocation status, leaving users open to attackers who use revoked certificates to spoof web sites and services. A browser extension is proposed and implemented for Google Chrome that checks CRL and OCSP status and notifies the user. It can also automatically navigate away from the page if the certificate is found to be revoked. The extension is created using JavaScript and uses a background process written in Python to handle the revocation checking. It is found to be able to complete CRL and OCSP requests for common websites in under a second, and under 200 milliseconds for locally cached responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

X.509 certificate parsing and validation is a critical task which has shown consistent lack of effectiveness, with practical attacks being reported with a steady rate during the last 10 years. In this work we analyze the X.509 standard and provide a grammar description of it amenable to the automated generation of a parser with strong termination guarantees, providing unambiguous input parsing. We report the results of analyzing a 11M X.509 certificate dump of the HTTPS servers running on the entire IPv4 space, showing that 21.5% of the certificates in use are syntactically invalid. We compare the results of our parsing against 7 widely used TLS libraries showing that 631k to 1,156k syntactically incorrect certificates are deemed valid by them (5.7%–10.5%), including instances with security critical mis-parsings. We prove the criticality of such mis-parsing exploiting one of the syntactic flaws found in existing certificates to perform an impersonation attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational complexity of public key cryptography over sensor nodes is not anymore a blocking concern in modern devices which natively (and efficiently) support elliptic curve cryptography. The problem has rather shifted toward the significant airtime consumption required to exchange multiple messages and certificates so as to perform authentication and key agreement. This letter addresses such problem by exploiting implicit certificates (elliptic curve Qu-Vanstone). We specifically propose a novel key management protocol (KMP) which suitably integrates implicit certificates with a standard elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman exchange, and performs authentication and key derivation. As confirmed by a proof-of-concept implementation and relevant experimental results, the proposed KMP guarantees maximal airtime savings (up to 86.7%) with respect to conventional approaches, robust key negotiation, fast rekeying, and efficient protection against replay attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

E-commerce means buying and selling goods and services across the Internet. Secured communication in e-commerce, across unsecured medium, such as the Internet, represents one of the major components in a domain of providing necessary security- critical demands, so the flow of information could go in a secure way. The Internet, as a global computer network must provide five major security services: confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, availability, and non-repudiation of information. Without guaranteeing aformentioned security goals, risks may be very high in e-commerce systems. A possible way to reduce these risks is to use digital certificates. Digital certificates provide a means of proving identity in electronic transactions, and from the point of view of computer communication they are irreplacable, but nevertheless they provide a good mechanism for implementing the major part of this security goal, and therefore, their usage in e-commerce is the major topic of this paper.