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

User Key Compromise

The topic of key compromise (that is, disclosure of a private key to an unauthorized or unintended party) can be considered in two contexts:

• Compromise of an end-entity private key

• Compromise of a CA private key

Because disclosure of a CA private key is considerably more disastrous than disclosure of an end-entity key, that aspect of key compromise is discussed in the following section, "Disaster Preparation and Recovery;" this section will focus on end-entity (or user) key compromise.

Knowing or Suspecting Key Compromise

How does Alice come to know or suspect that her key has been compromised? Unfortunately, there are few simple, concrete answers. The difficulty, of course, is that this is not equivalent to Eve breaking into ...