Subject: [KEYPROV] KEYPROV - Next Generation Considerations

From: Anders Rundgren <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:33:47 +0100

I don't know if there will be a KEYPROV 2.0 or not, but if there will, I 
think it could be useful identifying something that has happened during 
the KEYPROV journey and that is the establishment of key provisioning 
and management schemes based on "secure sessions" between the /key 
container/ and the /issuer/.

Why is that important?  Because secure sessions can emulate the "trusted 
environment" which is the corner-stone of traditional token personalization.

Currently I'm only aware of two documented schemes: GlobalPlatform's SCP 
(Secure Channel Protocol) and my own effort SKS/KeyGen2.

SCP is already supported by for example Microsoft's Card Enrollment 
system so /this concept has obviously passed the research state/.

SKS/KeyGen2 is a high level version of an SCP with Internet and browsers 
as primary target.

A constraint that you run into is that the bindings between a high-level 
protocol and the key container becomes quite rigid since most 
protocol-handler to container commands need MACs but the MACs are set by 
the issuer.  That is, the protocol-handler is a "semi-trusted proxy" 
since the the only real trust is between the issuer and the container 
but you still need a middleman to do XML packing/unpacking, GUI 
interaction, and of course, facilitate the actual networking.

Pretty interesting stuff IMO!

Anders