A scalable and secure cryptographic service

Abstract

In this paper we present the design of a scalable and secure cryptographic service that can be adopted to support large-scale networked systems, which may require strong authentication from a large population of users. Since the users may not be able to adequately protect their cryptographic credentials, our service leverages some better protected servers to help fulfill such authentication needs. Compared with previous proposals, our service has the following features: (1) it incorporates a 3-factor authentication mechanism, which facilitates compromise detection; (2) it supports immediate revocation of a cryptographic functionality in question; (3) the damage due to the compromise of a server is contained; (4) it is scalable and highly available. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.