A Proposed Scheme for Remedy of Man-In-The-Middle Attack on Certificate Authority

Abstract

PKI offers authentication via digital certificates, which are signed and provided by Certificate Authority (CA). A certificate can be signed by single CA or multiple CAs. A document signed by multiple CAs has less probability to be forged as compared to signed by a single CA. CA is a single point of failure, if CA issue forged certificate intentionally or maliciously the whole PKI system effected. Still PKI ensures a secure method for exchanging sensitive information over unsecured channels through the use of cryptographic public private key pair, issued by Certification Authority (CA) but even an honest CA can issue forged certificate. Now in India everything is digitalized to enable e-Governance. For that a unique identity, aadhar number issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is most widely used. For avoiding fraudulent certificates, strong authentication and attacks on CAs, the authors proposed an algorithm that use multiple signature on certificate based on aadhar number offered by UIDAI for online entity authentication-verification before issuing the certificate. If any of the CA is compromised whether its database or key will not be able to issue certificate to any server as authentication fails and multiple signatures are required. Proposed concept is more secure than the existing in terms of authentication, security and time.