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

Publication and Repositories

The most well known and most common method for the distribution of certificates and certificate revocation information is publication. The idea behind publication is that PKI information is posted in a widely known, publicly available, and easily accessible location. Publication is particularly attractive for large communities of users who, in general, are personally unknown to each other (that is, the PKI information does not have to be distributed directly to each individual).

The idea of publication in the context of public key cryptography was first introduced in "New Directions in Cryptography" [DH76]. This was the first publicly available paper on public key cryptography, and it postulated a model whereby ...