Mechanisms

This section gives a brief overview of the cryptographic mechanisms used to enable the PKI services of authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality. See the Handbook of Applied Cryptography [MvOV97] for further discussion.

Authentication

The PKI service of authentication (as opposed to the non-PKI operation of initial authentication to the local environment, which may involve single- or multi-factor authentication including passwords or biometric devices) employs the cryptographic technique of a digital signature. The signature may be computed over the hash of one of the following three values:

  • Some data to be authenticated

  • Some request that the user intends to send to a remote device

  • A random challenge issued by a remote device ...

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