Posted by arlene

The aim of this is to outline the details of some commercial products which employ cryptographic techniques. Some of these products are packages, while others are software entities which provide infrastructural facilities for sending coded data and are often hidden deep in system software. This does not include details of SSL: that follows it treats this technology as a detailed case study.

PGP

This is a publicly available system for encrypting files and e-mail messages. It was one of the first commercial products which used public key cryptography. It was developed by Phil Zimmermann while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It uses the RSA scheme for the management of keys used in symmetric encryption, the IDEA algorithm for sending data using symmetric encryption and the MD5 scheme for ensuring that messages have not been tampered with.

PGP is available as a standalone mailing system or as file encryption package. The major weakness with the system is the management of public keys: if a public key is compromised then a revocation certificate has to be sent to everybody who is in communication with the person whose keys have been compromised.

In PGP a public key is either advertised on special public key servers or reproduced on a Web page.

PCT

This is a Microsoft product which is very similar to the SSL briefly described earlier and described in more detail later. As SSL gains more and more adherents it is expected that this technology will be phased out.

SHTTP

This is a version of the HTTP protocol which enables secure transactions to be sent over the Web. However, since the browser developers have shown little interest in it, it has virtually died.

SET

This is a protocol which is used for sending credit card information over the Internet. It has three components: an electronic wallet which resides on a client computer, an SET server which is the responsibility of some vendor or merchant and a payment server which is resident at the premises of a bank or a credit card company.

The first thing that the user has to do when employing SET is to enter their credit card details into the electronic wallet. This will be stored as an encrypted file on the customer’s computer. At the same time the software associated with SET will produce a public and a private key.

When a purchase is made by an SET user the credit card details are encrypted using the private key; they are then sent to the merchant who is selling the goods or services that are to be paid for by the credit card. The merchant’s server then attaches a digital signature to the credit card details to establish the identity of the merchant; the resulting transaction is then sent to the bank or credit card company’s computer. This computer then validates the card and sends a receipt back to the merchant and to the customer. A major advantage of this technology is that the merchant’s staff are not able to discover the details of the credit cards that are used and the bank is not aware

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Coded Data Cryptographic Systems Software

• Cryptography (Public-Key) Standards and Protocols Notice
• Platforms and Convergence Digital Payment Systems (CAFE)
• How Public Key Generate and Store
• Network and Programming: the .Net framework
• The influence of the Internet and the electronic commerce continue...
• Key Differences Between Unix/Linux and NetWare (Applications)
• Application service providers
• The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and BOOTP continue...
• Setting Up Your PC as a Web
• Speech Application Programming Interface Speech-Related Technologies