Key Management
and Distribution
Presented by
Sir Najam
What is key management?
Key management is the set of techniques and
procedures supporting the establishment and
maintenance of keying relationships between
authorized parties.
A keying relationship is the state wherein
communicating entities share common
data(keying material) to facilitate cryptography
techniques. This data may include public or
secret keys, initialization values, and additional
non-secret parameters.
Key management encompasses techniques
and procedures supporting:
1. initialization of systems users within a domain;
2. generation, distribution, and installation of keying
material;
3. controlling the use of keying material;
4. update, revocation, and destruction of keying
material;
and
5. storage, backup/recovery, and archival of keying
material.
Objectives
The objective of key management is to
maintain
keying relationships and keying material in a
manner that counters relevant threats
In practice an additional objective is
conformance to
a relevant security policy
Threats
1. compromise of confidentiality of secret keys
2. compromise of authenticity of secret or
public keys.
3. unauthorized use of public or secret keys
Security Policy
Security policy explicitly or implicitly defines the
threats a system is intended to address
Security policy may affect the stringency of
cryptographic requirements, depending on the
susceptibility of the environment in questions
to
various types of attack.
Key management techniques
Public-key techniques
Primary advantages offered by public-key
techniques for applications related to key
management include:
1. simplified key management
2. on-line trusted server not required
3. enhanced functionality
Key management techniques
Key management
a) Symmetric-key encryption
plaintext ciphertex
encryptio t decryptio plaintext
n n
secret secret
symmetric key key
key
generator
Key management techniques
b) public-key encryption
plaintex
plaintext ciphertext
t
encryptio decryption
n
public private
key key
asymmetric key
pair generation
secure channel (private and
authentication)
secure channel (authentication
only)
unsecured channel (no
protection)
Key management techniques
Techniques for distributing confidential keys
Key layering and symmetric-key certificates
Key layering:
1. master keys – keys at the highest level in the hierarchy
2. key-encrypting keys – symmetric keys or encryption
public
keys used for key transport or storage of other keys
3. data keys – used to provide cryptographic operations
on user
data
Key management techniques
symmetric-key certificates:
Symmetric-key certificates provide a means for a KTC(Key
Translation Center) to avoid the requirement of either
maintaining a secure database of user secrets (or
duplicating such a database for multiple servers), or
retrieving such keys from a database upon translation
requests.
Key management life cycle
1. user registration
2. user initialization
3. key generation
4. key installation
5. key registration
6. normal use
7. key backup
8. key update
9. archival
10. key de-registration and destruction
11. key recovery
12. key revocation
Key Distribution
given parties A and B have various key
distribution alternatives:
1. A can select key and physically deliver to B
2. third party can select & deliver key to A & B
3. if A & B have communicated previously can
use previous key to encrypt a new key
4. if A & B have secure communications with a
third party C, C can relay key between A & B
Key Distribution Task
Key Distribution Scenario
Key Distribution Issues
hierarchies of KDC’s required for large
networks, but must trust each other
session key lifetimes should be limited for
greater security
use of automatic key distribution on behalf of
users, but must trust system
use of decentralized key distribution
controlling key usage
Simple Secret Key Distribution
Merkle proposed this very simple scheme
allows secure communications
no keys before/after exist
Secret Key Distribution with
Confidentiality and Authentication
Distribution of Public Keys
can be considered as using one of:
public announcement
publicly available directory
public-key authority
public-key certificates
Public Announcement
users distribute public keys to recipients or
broadcast to community at large
eg. append PGP keys to email messages or post
to news groups or email list
major weakness is forgery
anyone can create a key claiming to be
someone else and broadcast it
until forgery is discovered can masquerade as
claimed user
Publicly Available Directory
can obtain greater security by registering
keys with a public directory
directory must be trusted with properties:
contains {name,public-key} entries
participants register securely with directory
participants can replace key at any time
directory is periodically published
directory can be accessed electronically
still vulnerable to tampering or forgery
Public-Key Authority
improve security by tightening control over
distribution of keys from directory
has properties of directory
and requires users to know public key for the
directory
then users interact with directory to obtain
any desired public key securely
does require real-time access to directory
when keys are needed
may be vulnerable to tampering
Public-Key Authority
Public-Key Certificates
certificates allow key exchange without real-
time access to public-key authority
a certificate binds identity to public key
usually with other info such as period of
validity, rights of use etc
with all contents signed by a trusted Public-
Key or Certificate Authority (CA)
can be verified by anyone who knows the
public-key authorities public-key
Public-Key Certificates
