Subject: [KEYPROV] "Universal Provisioning" for OTP, PKI, CardSpace, ...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 15:05:02 -0400

Dear List,

"Universal Provisioning" is a concept where a user in a secure on-line
process with an issuer, is acquiring a number of credentials, where the
individual credentials may be based on different technologies.

Why would this be of any value?  Well, to begin with the cost for
establishing a new protocol is substantial and when you take a closer
look the differences in requirements for issuing and distributing OTP,
PKI, and for example managed Microsoft InfoCards doesn't seem to be
particularly overwhelming.  What's more, by using a PKI-oriented
approach in the core protocol, you can "piggyback" other credentials on
top of that resulting in an almost "quirk-free" design as well as
enabling functionality not generally available in provisioning protocols
for symmetric keys.

Another prime characteristic of Universal Provisioning is the close link
to the "Universal Client", the Internet browser.  On the URL below you
can verify that this is already a fact for PKI:

http://demo.webpki.org/mozkeygen

Although working, notable shortcomings of the Mozilla scheme IMO
motivate a new mechanism.  In particular the absence of

- Acceptance by the browser community.  Currently each browser
  vendor has their own key-generation request "standard"

- PIN provisioning and policy support (per issuer NB)

- Algorithm negotiation and agility (like migrating from RSA to ECC)

- Ability for an issuer to specify (and later verify) that
  generated keys are stored in a TPM, Smart Card, HSM or similar

- Robust, secure, and "consumer-friendly" methods for performing
  user-key life-cycle management

appears to be show-stoppers for mass-market applications such as on-line
banking and citizen-to-government services.

Note: Universal Provisioning should NOT be viewed as a competitor to
IETF's KEYPROV, because the goals for these efforts have from the very
beginning been entirely different.  Since browser-based security
standards have proved to be utterly difficult to succeed with
(success=preinstall), you must probably even be a little bit crazy just
to think about it :-)

In case you are interested in developments in this space, maybe we can
chat about it at the RSA conference in case you will be there?

Regards
Anders Rundgren

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