Carleton University - School of Computer Science Honours Project
Summer 2021
Webserver Authentication using Client-side Certificates
Filipp Gorodkov
SCS Honours Project Image
ABSTRACT
Servers storing user emails and passwords can create the possibility of a data breach leaking that information, additionally compromising other accounts that happened to use similar login information elsewhere. Client certificate authentication (leveraging the security of public key cryptography) is one possible solution to this problem, but while the major browsers do have support for client certificates the user experience is prohibitively lacking, especially for non-technical users. This report evaluates improving the user experience of managing client certificates in the Firefox browser in order to reduce the technical proficiency required to use this authentication mechanism.