Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Digital Receipts: A System To Detect The Compromise Of Digital Certificates, Nathaniel Allen Seeley

Theses and Dissertations

The ease of copying digital materials creates difficulty in detecting the theft of digital certificates. Uneducated users frequently fail to protect their digital certificate keys by not encrypting them, storing them in insecure places, and using them unwisely. In addition, there is no way to prove that protocols involving certificates are completely secure. This thesis introduces a system to ameliorate these problems by detecting the compromise of digital certificates. It leverages dual logging messages sent via side channels to a trusted third party. This third party correlates these messages and automatically detects when an imposter presents a certificate based on …