Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations

Web Model

The Web model derives its name from its birth over the World Wide Web and its dependence on popular Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In this model, a number of CA public keys are pre-installed in a standard, off-the-shelf browser. These keys define the set of CAs that the browser user will initially "trust" to act as roots for certificate verification. Note that although this set of root keys may be modified (for example, reduced or augmented) by the user, it is generally recognized that few browser users will be sophisticated enough, with respect to PKI and security issues, to understand or modify this aspect of browser behavior.

This model, similar on a cursory examination to the distributed ...