Tradeoffs in certificate revocation schemes

Abstract

Cryptographic certificates are a powerful tool for security concerned applications where the participants must be authenticated in order to access some resources or commit a transaction. However, due to various reasons, the validity of such certificates can change over time, introducing the risk of an invalid certificate being used to authenticate an entity. Various methods of mitigating this risk have been devised, known broadly as "certificate revocation" schemes. In this paper, we categorize and analyze them based on our identified characteristics. We further discuss tradeoffs among them and suggest how system designers might apply the analyses.