Proprietary Certificates

Markus Jakobsson, Ari Juels, Phong Q. Nguyen

Abstract: Certificates play an essential role in public-key cryptography, and are likely to become a cornerstone of commerce-related applications. Traditional certificates, however, are not secure against certificate lending, i.e., a situation in which a certificate holder voluntarily shares with others the rights bestowed upon him through a certificate. This type of abuse is a concern in several types of applications, such as those related to digital rights management.