Possible approaches to certification authority implementation

Bc. Ján Lieskovský

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The presented work covers the subject of certification authorities and related topics. First, we discuss the relevant cryptography areas, like public-key cryptography, hash functions and digital signatures which are used in the digital certificates. Then we analyze the particular parts of the public-key infrastructure (PKI) to be able to determine the CA position in it and to separate the function, it should perform. Further we discuss in more detail the structure of the digital certificate request and digital certificate. We focus on the extensions, in order to exactly describe the meaning of particular extension and relations between them (like allowed combinations of bits in the KeyUsage extension). In the second part of our work, we analyze current approaches to a CA implementation. We discuss them in order to select our own approach. In the end, we describe library used and tools and talk about gained experiences and insights. This diploma thesis should also provide information needed for CA implementation -- introductory describing basic principles, CA functions and methods, structure of issued electronic documents, as well as description of currently used CA implementation techniques. A result of this investigation should be a fully functional CA, implemented by us.

Keywords

certificate, certificate authority, certificate request, extensions, PKI, QCA, registration authority, signature algorithm, subject of the certificate, X.509

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 18. 5. 2007

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 26. 6. 2007
• Supervisor: prof. RNDr. Václav Matyáš, M.Sc.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Informatics

Master programme / field:
Applied Informatics / Applied Informatics