The Web's PKI: An Expository Review and Certificate Validation Cost Simulation

Abstract

Public key infrastructure (PKI), comprised of X.509 certificates (PKIX) and cryptographic protocols, helps ensure secure communications for the Web. The creation of PKI is a fascinating story that dates back to the 1970s and came about thanks to people with a strong desire to democratize privacy and security on the Internet. PKIX became the model implementation for PKI that included a fundamental, openly de ned, digital certificate. This paper offers an overview of PKIX for a general audience. It also encourages students to explore some of these ideas, with a discussion on modeling and simulation of costs associated with certificate validation, and some computational number theory.