Carleton University - School of Computer Science Honours Project
Winter 2022
Certificate Cross-Signing Analysis
Ethan Thompson
SCS Honours Project Image
ABSTRACT
On the web, secure communication is made possible through the trust established using the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). When connecting to devices on the internet, the web PKI relies on certificates to help prove authority to identify as a specific web address as well as establish a few important connection parameters to be used for communication. The issuers of these certificates are Certificate Authorities (CA’s) and are trusted to issue certificates only to entities deserving trust. In this project I will be collecting and analyzing a specific kind of certificate, being cross-signed certificates. These certificates play a big role in creating many different trust paths when attempting to verify identity online.