Unified storage and management of cryptographic keys and certificates

• US 9,276,742 B1
• Filed: 04/01/2015
• Issued: 03/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Krishnan, Subramanian, Panchal, Nikunj R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Das, Chameli
• Application Number:
  US14/676,084
• Time in Patent Office: 335 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0894 Escrow, recovery or storing of secret information, e.g. secret key escrow or cryptographic key storage
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3263 involving certificates, e.g. public key certificate [PKC] or attribute certificate [AC]; Public key infrastructure [PKI] arrangements network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using certificates in a packet data network H04L63/0823

Abstract

Cryptographic resources, such as those including PGP keys and certificates, are transformed such that they are understood by certificate repositories, such as in a format understood by the Java JAVA tools of JAVA KEYSTORE (JKS). JAVA is one example of a general-purpose computer programming language that is concurrent, class-based, object-oriented. JAVA KEYSTORE is one example of a repository of security certificates, such as authorization certificates and public key certificates, used for instance in SSL encryption. The transformation of the cryptographic resources is completed such that the necessary metadata for retrieving the original cryptographic resources, or artifacts thereof, are retained. In that way, cryptographic resources are effectively hidden within the certificate repository until needed. The security program applies an algorithm to generate keys for JKS storage such that the keys “masquerade” in a JKS canonical format until the time in which the resources are needed to be in a PGP canonical format.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a cryptographic resource including a first artifact in a first format having a first metadata set, the first format being a pretty good privacy (PGP) canonical format;

converting the first artifact to a second artifact having a second format;

storing the second artifact in a repository; and

responsive to a request for the first artifact, creating a third artifact based on the second artifact;

wherein;

the repository cannot store the first artifact, at least in part, because the first artifact is formatted according to the first format;

the second artifact being formatted according to the second format retains the first metadata set of the first artifact;

the repository configured to store the second artifact, at least in part, because the second artifact is formatted according to the second format;

the third artifact is a functional copy of the first artifact, the third artifact functionally replaces the first artifact;

the second format is a standard format of the repository; and

the first format and the second format are distinct formats.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

encrypting a file using the third artifact.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the third artifact is formatted according to the first format;

the third artifact having the first metadata set.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the cryptographic resource is a pretty good privacy (PGP) key ring set;

the first artifact is a PGP key pair including a PGP private key and a PGP public key;

the first format is a PGP format;

the second artifact is a key pair; and

the second format is selected from a group consisting of;

a secure socket layer (SSL) protocol and a transport layer security (TLS) protocol.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

extracting the PGP private key from a secret key ring; and

extracting the PGP public key from a public key ring;

wherein;

the step of converting the first artifact to a second artifact having a second format includes building an SSL certificate from a PGP certificate.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the repository is a JAVA KEYSTORE (JKS) repository.