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Chapter: Cryptography and Network Security

Public-Key Management

This whole business of protecting public keys from tampering is the single most difficult problem in practical public key applications. PGP provides a structure for solving this problem, with several suggested options that may be used.

Public-Key Management

 

This whole business of protecting public keys from tampering is the single most difficult problem in practical public key applications. PGP provides a structure for solving this problem, with several suggested options that may be used.

 

1. Approaches to Public-Key Management

 

The essence of the problem is this: User A must build up a public-key ring containing the public keys of other users to interoperate with them using PGP. Suppose that A's key ring contains a public key attributed to B but that the key is, in fact, owned by C. This could happen if, for example, A got the key from a bulletin board system (BBS) that was used by B to post the public key but that has been compromised by C. The result is that two threats now exist. First, C can send messages to A and forge B's signature, so that A will accept the message as coming from B. Second, any encrypted message from A to B can be read by C.

 

A number of approaches are possible for minimizing the risk that a user's public-key ring contains false public keys. Suppose that A wishes to obtain a reliable public key for B. The following are some approaches that could be used:

 

o   Physically get the key from B. B could store her public key (PUb) on a floppy disk and hand it to A..

 

o   Verify a key by telephone. If A can recognize B on the phone, A could call B and ask her to dictate the key, in radix-64 format, over the phone.

 

o   Obtain B's public key from a mutual trusted individual D. For this purpose, the introducer, D, creates a signed certificate. The certificate includes B's public key, the time of creation of the key, and a validity period for the key.

 

o   Obtain B's public key from a trusted certifying authority. Again, a public key certificate is created and signed by the authority. A could then access the authority, providing a user name and receiving a signed certificate.

 

 

For cases 3 and 4, A would already have to have a copy of the introducer's public key and trust that this key is valid. Ultimately, it is up to A to assign a level of trust to anyone who is to act as an introducer.

 

2. The Use of Trust

 

Although PGP does not include any specification for establishing certifying authorities or for establishing trust, it does provide a convenient means of using trust, associating trust with public keys, and exploiting trust information.

 

The basic structure is as follows. Each entry in the public-key ring is a public-key certificate.

 

Associated with each such entry is a key legitimacy field that indicates the extent to which PGP will trust that this is a valid public key for this user; the higher the level of trust, the stronger is the binding of this user ID to this key. This field is computed by PGP.

 

Also associated with the entry are zero or more signatures that the key ring owner has collected that sign this certificate. In turn, each signature has associated with it a signature trust field that indicates the degree to which this PGP user trusts the signer to certify public keys.

 

The key legitimacy field is derived from the collection of signature trust fields in the entry.

 

Finally, each entry defines a public key associated with a particular owner, and an owner trust field is included that indicates the degree to which this public key is trusted to sign other public-key certificates; this level of trust is assigned by the user.

 

The three fields mentioned in the previous paragraph are each contained in a structure referred to as a trust flag byte.

 

Suppose that we are dealing with the public-key ring of user A. We can describe the operation of the trust processing as follows:

 

o   When A inserts a new public key on the public-key ring, PGP must assign a value to the trust flag that is associated with the owner of this public key. If the owner is A, and therefore this public key also appears in the private-key ring, then a value of ultimate trust is automatically assigned to the trust field. Otherwise, PGP asks A for his assessment of the trust to be assigned to the owner of this key, and A must enter the desired level. The user can specify that this owner is unknown, untrusted, marginally trusted, or completely trusted.

 

o   When the new public key is entered, one or more signatures may be attached to it. More signatures may be added later. When a signature is inserted into the entry, PGP searches the public-key ring to see if the author of this signature is among the known public-key owners. If so, the OWNERTRUST value for this owner is assigned to the SIGTRUST field for this signature. If not, an unknown user value is assigned.

 

o   The value of the key legitimacy field is calculated on the basis of the signature trust fields present in this entry. If at least one signature has a signature trust value of ultimate, then the key legitimacy value is set to complete.


 

The node labeled "You" refers to the entry in the public-key ring corresponding to this user. This key is legitimate and the OWNERTRUST value is ultimate trust. Each other node in the key ring has an OWNERTRUST value of undefined unless some other value is assigned by the user. In this example, this user has specified that it always trusts the following users to sign other keys: D, E, F, L. This user partially trusts users A and B to sign other keys.

 

So the shading, or lack thereof, of the nodes indicates the level of trust assigned by this user. The tree structure indicates which keys have been signed by which other users. If a key is signed by a user whose key is also in this key ring, the arrow joins the signed key to the signatory. If the key is signed by a user whose key is not present in this key ring, the arrow joins the signed key to a question mark, indicating that the signatory is unknown to this user.

 

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