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Add bx509d

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Nicolas Williams
2019-10-09 20:18:01 -05:00
parent 4d4c7078cd
commit 575c67806b
41 changed files with 5794 additions and 684 deletions
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31
doc/whatis.texi
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@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
@c $Id$
@node What is Kerberos?, Building and Installing, Introduction, Top
@node What is Kerberos?, What is PKIX?, Introduction, Top
@chapter What is Kerberos?
@quotation
@@ -162,3 +162,32 @@ from 1988.
These documents can be found on our web-page at
@url{http://www.pdc.kth.se/kth-krb/}.
@node What is PKIX?, What is a Certification Authority (CA)?, Introduction, Top
@chapter What is PKIX?
PKIX is the set of Internet standards for Public Key Infrastructure (PKI),
based on the ITU-T's x.509 standads. PKI is an authentication mechanism based
on public keys (the 'PK' in 'PKI').
In PKIX we have public keys "certified" by certification authorities (CAs). A
"relying party" is software that validates an entity's certificate and, if
valid, trusts the certified public key to "speak for" the entity identified by
the certificate.
In a PKI every entity has one (or more) certified public/private key pairs.
@node What is a Certification Authority (CA)?, Building and Installing, Introduction, Top
A Certification Authority (CA) is an entity in a PKI that issues certificates
to other entities -- a CA certifies that a public key speaks for a particular,
named entity.
There are two types of CAs: off-line and online. Typically PKI hierarchies are
organized such that the most security-critical private keys are only used by
off-line CAs to certify the less security-critical public keys of online CAs.
Heimdal has support for off-line CAs using its Hx509 library and hxtool
command.
Heimdal also has an online CA with a RESTful, HTTPS-based protocol.