Chain reduction of authorisation certificates Online publication date: Sun, 05-Jul-2015
by Yki Kortesniemi; Timo Kiravuo; Mikko Särelä; Hannu H. Kari
International Journal of Security and Networks (IJSN), Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015
Abstract: Authorisation certificate based access control relies on delegation as a means of distributing the access rights. Unfortunately, the resulting certificate chains can cause performance and privacy issues. Certificate chain reduction is a proposed solution that replaces a chain of certificates with a single certificate of equal functionality. In this paper we analyse chain reduction and find a number of issues in implementing the reduction. We evaluate the performance improvements and find reduction an effective tool. We also evaluate the suitability of certificates for embedded platforms by implementing a prototype. We propose that a number of use cases exhibits an hourglass-shaped chain structure that allows for a consistent performance of verifying just one certificate using reduction. Privacy, on the other hand, is more difficult to improve and all the assumed goals cannot be achieved with chain reduction alone. We use SPKI certificates for our analysis.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Security and Networks (IJSN):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook