Book Image

TLS Cryptography In-Depth

By : Dr. Paul Duplys, Dr. Roland Schmitz
Book Image

TLS Cryptography In-Depth

By: Dr. Paul Duplys, Dr. Roland Schmitz

Overview of this book

TLS is the most widely used cryptographic protocol today, enabling e-commerce, online banking, and secure online communication. Written by Dr. Paul Duplys, Security, Privacy & Safety Research Lead at Bosch, and Dr. Roland Schmitz, Internet Security Professor at Stuttgart Media University, this book will help you gain a deep understanding of how and why TLS works, how past attacks on TLS were possible, and how vulnerabilities that enabled them were addressed in the latest TLS version 1.3. By exploring the inner workings of TLS, you’ll be able to configure it and use it more securely. Starting with the basic concepts, you’ll be led step by step through the world of modern cryptography, guided by the TLS protocol. As you advance, you’ll be learning about the necessary mathematical concepts from scratch. Topics such as public-key cryptography based on elliptic curves will be explained with a view on real-world applications in TLS. With easy-to-understand concepts, you’ll find out how secret keys are generated and exchanged in TLS, and how they are used to creating a secure channel between a client and a server. By the end of this book, you’ll have the knowledge to configure TLS servers securely. Moreover, you’ll have gained a deep knowledge of the cryptographic primitives that make up TLS.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
1
Part I Getting Started
8
Part II Shaking Hands
16
Part III Off the Record
22
Part IV Bleeding Hearts and Biting Poodles
27
Bibliography
28
Index

10.3 Main components of a public-key infrastructure

A Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a system that is able to issue, distribute, and validate certificates. While a CA is an important part of a PKI, the two terms are not the same. In order to limit the potential damage in case of a compromise, it is customary that the various operational tasks of a PKI are taken over by logically separate functional entities within the PKI, which have their own private keys. One of these is the CA. We will now take a closer look at all these entities:

  • Certification Authority (CA): Within a PKI, the CA is responsible for creating, signing, and issuing the certificates. Moreover, all certificates issued by the CA should be archived in a secure manner.

    When looking at Figure 10.4, it quickly becomes clear that a CA is a single point of failure within a PKI. It is therefore mandatory to run the CA within a specially secured environment with strictly enforced access control rules. Nevertheless, there...