1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

certificate: A certificate is a collection of attributes and extensions that can be stored persistently. The set of attributes in a certificate can vary depending on the intended usage of the certificate. A certificate securely binds a public key to the entity that holds the corresponding private key. A certificate is commonly used for authentication and secure exchange of information on open networks, such as the Internet, extranets, and intranets. Certificates are digitally signed by the issuing certification authority (CA) and can be issued for a user, a computer, or a service. The most widely accepted format for certificates is defined by the ITU-T X.509 version 3 international standards. For more information about attributes and extensions, see [RFC3280] and [X509] sections 7 and 8.

certificate revocation list (CRL): A list of certificates that have been revoked by the certification authority (CA) that issued them (that have not yet expired of their own accord). The list must be cryptographically signed by the CA that issues it. Typically, the certificates are identified by serial number. In addition to the serial number for the revoked certificates, the CRL contains the revocation reason for each certificate and the time the certificate was revoked. As described in [RFC3280], two types of CRLs commonly exist in the industry. Base CRLs keep a complete list of revoked certificates, while delta CRLs maintain only those certificates that have been revoked since the last issuance of a base CRL. For more information, see [X509] section 7.3, [MSFT-CRL], and [RFC3280] section 5.

certification authority (CA): A third party that issues public key certificates. Certificates serve to bind public keys to a user identity. Each user and certification authority (CA) can decide whether to trust another user or CA for a specific purpose, and whether this trust should be transitive. For more information, see [RFC3280].

key: In cryptography, a generic term used to refer to cryptographic data that is used to initialize a cryptographic algorithm. Keys are also sometimes referred to as keying material.

object identifier (OID): In the context of an object server, a 64-bit number that uniquely identifies an object.

private key: One of a pair of keys used in public-key cryptography. The private key is kept secret and is used to decrypt data that has been encrypted with the corresponding public key. For an introduction to this concept, see [CRYPTO] section 1.8 and [IEEE1363] section 3.1.

public key: One of a pair of keys used in public-key cryptography. The public key is distributed freely and published as part of a digital certificate. For an introduction to this concept, see [CRYPTO] section 1.8 and [IEEE1363] section 3.1.

public key infrastructure (PKI): The laws, policies, standards, and software that regulate or manipulate certificates and public and private keys. In practice, it is a system of digital certificates, certificate authorities (CAs), and other registration authorities that verify and authenticate the validity of each party involved in an electronic transaction. For more information, see [X509] section 6.

registration authority (RA): A generic term for a software module, hardware component, or human operator thereof that enables a user or public key infrastructure (PKI) administrator to perform various administration and operational functions as part of the certification or revocation process.

relying party (RP): The entity (person or computer) using information from a certificate in order to make a security decision. Typically, the RP is responsible for guarding some resource and applying access control policies based on information learned from a certificate.

request: A message from a client to an OCSP responder. The message requests the revocation status of an X.509 certificate (see [RFC2560]).

responder: An OCSP Extensions server that provides OCSP responses (see [RFC2560]).

response: A message from an OCSP responder. The message specifies the status of an X.509 certificate (see [RFC2560]).

revocation: The process of invalidating a certificate. For more details, see [RFC3280] section 3.3.

SHA-1: An algorithm that generates a 160-bit hash value from an arbitrary amount of input data, as described in [RFC3174]. SHA-1 is used with the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) in the Digital Signature Standard (DSS), in addition to other algorithms and standards.

trust: To accept another authority's statements for the purposes of authentication and authorization, especially in the case of a relationship between two domains. If domain A trusts domain B, domain A accepts domain B's authentication and authorization statements for principals represented by security principal objects in domain B; for example, the list of groups to which a particular user belongs. As a noun, a trust is the relationship between two domains described in the previous sentence.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.