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Revocation, etc...
I have written a paper of potential interest to the SPKI/SDSI group,
which is posted on my web site. See
http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/publications.html
where the first paper listed is entitled,
"Can we eliminate revocation lists?"
The approach proposed there extends the SPKI/SDSI model in two directions:
-- explicitly describing how key compromise can be handled
-- giving certificates THREE dates:
-- an issue date (i.e. the "not-before" date)
-- an "good-until" date (the certificate is guaranteed by
the issuer to be good from the issuer until
the "good-until" date; it can't be revoked
until after then. No on-line checks would be
needed until after this date.)
-- an expiration date (i.e. the "not-after" date)
This divides the life of a certificate into periods:
not-yet-good
definitely good (no need to check)
probably good (and checkable)
expired
Standard SDSI (without on-line checks) has
good-until = expiration (no checking)
Standard X.509 has
good-until = issue (always checking)
The new proposal gets the benefits of both models, more clearly...
Comments??
Ron Rivest
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