Secure automated request processing software for DataGrid certification authorities

Typical Public Key Infrastructure (Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate Policy and Certification Practices Framework, IETF Network Working Group, RFC 2527, 1999) includes a Certification Authority (CA) and several Registration Authorities (RA). In this report we present our solution for building the CA. Our goal was to make it secure, robust and as automated as possible. In our solution the message exchange between CAs and RAs uses signed e-mail. Supported features include issuing and revocation of certificates, information services and certificate renewal. All operations requiring a private key of the CA are held on the separate offline signing host and are fully controlled by an operator, making the CA attack proof.