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Re: Encryption key strategies


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  • From: Thomas Lenggenhager <>
  • To:
  • Subject: Re: Encryption key strategies
  • Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 09:15:31 +0200
  • Organization: SWITCH

Scott Cantor wrote:
> With signing, you can do fancy things like use metadata to authorize keys by
> name and then use path validation, but encryption isn't like that. If we
> don't store an actual key or certificate inside the metadata, we have no
> mechanism today to obtain the peer's public key to do the encryption with.
>
> If we start storing keys for encryption in the metadata, you quickly have to
> ask why anybody would bother not doing that with the signing keys and the
> path validation option becomes rather pointless. You lose the benefits of
> key roll-over.

My concern with keys in metadata is the deployment issue, when an SP or
IdP has to replace a key. Would there be means for smooth key changes
with no service interruption?
Provided the policy requires new keys for certificate renewal, that
might happen once a year for each SP or IdP.

Is it related with dynamic metadata retrieval, based on the providerId?
If I understand correctly, dynamically retrieved metadata would have to
be signed by a trusted third party.

Thomas
--
Thomas Lenggenhager http://www.switch.ch/
SWITCH The Swiss Education & Research Network
Zurich, Switzerland Tel: +41 44 268 1541



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