Intranet Security using Attribute Certificates under the Privilege Management Infrastructure

Abstract

In the computerized organizations, the public key infrastructure (PKI) certifications enforce authentication services providing stronger security. The PKI provides a framework to verify the identity of each entity in a given domain. The PKI framework includes mechanisms of requesting, issuing, signing, and validating public-key certificates. The privilege management infrastructure (PMI) framework determines whether the entity is authorized to access specific resources. It includes the issuance and validation of attribute certificates. Public-key certificates are certificates for trusting public-key, while attribute certificates are certificates for trusting privilege attribute. In the practical cases, when the system identifies a user's identity, it allocates the right permissions to the resources to the user according to the roles he/she played. This permission control mechanism is called the role-based access control (RBAC). This paper addresses an efficient privilege management mechanism, based on PMI and RBAC, to achieve the information security objectives of non-repudiation, integrity, and security. A security model is built to solve problems of privilege management and duty delegation.