Anti-capitalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-capitalism 

"Pyramid of Capitalist System", a 1911 Industrial Workers of the World poster

Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, usually some form of socialism.

Socialism

Karl Marx, considered by many as one of the founding fathers of anti-capitalist thought

Socialism advocates public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.

1. A theory or policy of social organisation which aims at or advocates the ownership and democratic control of the means of production, by workers or the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.
2. Socialists argue for a cooperative/community economy, or the commanding heights of the economy, with democratic control by the people over the state, although there have been some undemocratic philosophies. "State" or "worker cooperative" ownership is in fundamental opposition to "private" ownership of means of production, which is a defining feature of capitalism. Most socialists argue that capitalism unfairly concentrates power, wealth and profit, among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation.

Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalizations that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products to be sold at a profit (such as high-pressure advertisement); thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand.

Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need; they argue that making money, or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand.

Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to inaccessible economic decisions that result in immoral production, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction. According to socialists, private property in the means of production becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralized, socialized institutions based on private appropriation of revenue (but based on cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs) until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant. With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organization that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialized assets. Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy.

Early socialists (Utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticized capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society, and does not utilise available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.

Anarchism and libertarian socialism

Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves."

 

For the influential German individualist anarchist philosopher Max Stirner, "private property is a spook which "lives by the grace of law" and it "becomes 'mine' only by effect of the law". In other words, private property exists purely "through the protection of the State, through the State's grace." Recognising its need for state protection, Stirner argued that "[i]t need not make any difference to the 'good citizens' who protects them and their principles, whether an absolute King or a constitutional one, a republic, if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose protector they always 'love'? Not that of labour", rather it is "interest-bearing possession ... labouring capital, therefore ... labour certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labour of capital and of the—subject labourers"." French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Gimenez Igualada saw "capitalism [as] an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously...That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State.".

Within anarchism there emerged a critique of wage slavery which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy. Libertarian socialists believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation, and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the industrial revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use, Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines while later Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves.". American anarchist Emma Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property recognizes," she wrote in Anarchism and Other Essays, "is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade." She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron."

Noam Chomsky contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace. Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial manufacture, while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor. As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of "private property" and "personal possession". Whereas "private property" grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not, and regardless of its productive capacity, "possession" grants no rights to things that are not in use.

In addition to individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker's "big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs, and patents), Kevin Carson argues that the state has also transferred wealth to the wealthy by subsidizing organizational centralization, in the form of transportation and communication subsidies. He believes that Tucker overlooked this issue due to Tucker's focus on individual market transactions, whereas Carson also focuses on organizational issues. Carson holds that “capitalism, arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its survival is unimaginable.” Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism," a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy," which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]."

Marxism

Capital: Critique of Political Economy, by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

— Karl Marx, 1837

Karl Marx saw capitalism as a historical stage, once progressive but which would eventually stagnate due to internal contradictions and would eventually be followed by socialism. Marx claimed that capitalism was nothing more than a necessary stepping stone for the progression of man, which would then face a political revolution before embracing the classless society. Marxists define capital as "a social, economic relation" between people (rather than between people and things). In this sense they seek to abolish capital. They believe that private ownership of the means of production enriches capitalists (owners of capital) at the expense of workers ("the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer"). In brief, they argue that the owners of the means of production do not work and therefore exploit the workerforce. In Karl Marx's view, the capitalists would eventually accumulate more and more capital impoverishing the working class, creating the social conditions for a revolution that would overthrow the institutions of capitalism. Private ownership over the means of production and distribution is seen as a dependency of non-owning classes on the ruling class, and ultimately a source of restriction of human freedom.

Barter

Barter is a system of exchange where goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is distinguishable from gift economies in many ways; one of them is that the reciprocal exchange is immediate and not delayed in time. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral (i.e., mediated through barter organizations) and, in most developed countries, usually only exists parallel to monetary systems to a very limited extent. Barter, as a replacement for money as the method of exchange, is used in times of monetary crisis, such as when the currency may be either unstable (e.g., hyperinflation or deflationary spiral) or simply unavailable for conducting commerce. Bartering could be considered a social starting point towards an anti-capitalist system, by negating the need for a medium of exchange.

Wage slavery

Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person.

The term wage slavery has been used to criticize exploitation of labour and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices, and leisure in an economy. The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their "species character" not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma and status diminution. It has been argued by some centre-left and left leaning activists that the economy of the contemporary United States constitutes a softer form of wage slavery, in which conditions are not grinding, but nonetheless not conducive to individual economic progress.

Public key certificate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_certificate 

Client and server certificate of *.wikipedia.org

In cryptography, a public key certificate, also known as a digital certificate or identity certificate, is an electronic document used to prove the ownership of a public key. The certificate includes information about the key, information about the identity of its owner (called the subject), and the digital signature of an entity that has verified the certificate's contents (called the issuer). If the signature is valid, and the software examining the certificate trusts the issuer, then it can use that key to communicate securely with the certificate's subject. In email encryption, code signing, and e-signature systems, a certificate's subject is typically a person or organization. However, in Transport Layer Security (TLS) a certificate's subject is typically a computer or other device, though TLS certificates may identify organizations or individuals in addition to their core role in identifying devices. TLS, sometimes called by its older name Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), is notable for being a part of HTTPS, a protocol for securely browsing the web.

In a typical public-key infrastructure (PKI) scheme, the certificate issuer is a certificate authority (CA), usually a company that charges customers to issue certificates for them. By contrast, in a web of trust scheme, individuals sign each other's keys directly, in a format that performs a similar function to a public key certificate.

The most common format for public key certificates is defined by X.509. Because X.509 is very general, the format is further constrained by profiles defined for certain use cases, such as Public Key Infrastructure (X.509) as defined in RFC 5280.

Types of certificate

The roles of root certificate, intermediate certificate and end-entity certificate as in the chain of trust.

TLS/SSL server certificate

In TLS (an updated replacement for SSL), a server is required to present a certificate as part of the initial connection setup. A client connecting to that server will perform the certification path validation algorithm:

1. The subject of the certificate matches the hostname (i.e. domain name) to which the client is trying to connect;
2. The certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority.

The primary hostname (domain name of the website) is listed as the Common Name in the Subject field of the certificate. A certificate may be valid for multiple hostnames (multiple websites). Such certificates are commonly called Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificates or Unified Communications Certificates (UCC). These certificates contain the field Subject Alternative Name, though many CAs will also put them into the Subject Common Name field for backward compatibility. If some of the hostnames contain an asterisk (*), a certificate may also be called a wildcard certificate.

A TLS server may be configured with a self-signed certificate. When that is the case, clients will generally be unable to verify the certificate, and will terminate the connection unless certificate checking is disabled.

As per the applications, SSL Certificates can be classified into three types:

• Domain Validation SSL;
• Organization Validation SSL;
• Extended Validation SSL.

TLS/SSL client certificate

Client certificates are less common than server certificates, and are used to authenticate the client connecting to a TLS service, for instance to provide access control. Because most services provide access to individuals, rather than devices, most client certificates contain an email address or personal name rather than a hostname. Also, because authentication is usually managed by the service provider, client certificates are not usually issued by a public CA that provides server certificates. Instead, the operator of a service that requires client certificates will usually operate their own internal CA to issue them. Client certificates are supported by many web browsers, but most services use passwords and cookies to authenticate users, instead of client certificates.

Client certificates are more common in RPC systems, where they are used to authenticate devices to ensure that only authorized devices can make certain RPC calls.

Email certificate

In the S/MIME protocol for secure email, senders need to discover which public key to use for any given recipient. They get this information from an email certificate. Some publicly trusted certificate authorities provide email certificates, but more commonly S/MIME is used when communicating within a given organization, and that organization runs its own CA, which is trusted by participants in that email system.

EMV certificate

EMV payment cards are preloaded with EMV Certificate, Card Issuer Certificate, signed by EMV Certificate Authority to validate authenticity of the payment card during the payment transaction. EMV CA Certificate public key is loaded on ATM or POS and used for validating Card Issuer Certificate.

Code signing certificate

Certificates can also be used to validate signatures on programs to ensure they were not tampered with during delivery.

Qualified certificate

A certificate identifying an individual, typically for electronic signature purposes. These are most commonly used in Europe, where the eIDAS regulation standardizes them and requires their recognition.

Root certificate

A self-signed certificate used to sign other certificates. Also sometimes called a trust anchor.

Intermediate certificate

A certificate used to sign other certificates. An intermediate certificate must be signed by another intermediate certificate, or a root certificate.

End-entity or leaf certificate

Any certificate that cannot be used to sign other certificates. For instance, TLS/SSL server and client certificates, email certificates, code signing certificates, and qualified certificates are all end-entity certificates.

Self-signed certificate

A certificate with a subject that matches its issuer, and a signature that can be verified by its own public key. Most types of certificate can be self-signed. Self-signed certificates are also often called snake oil certificates to emphasize their untrustworthiness.

Common fields

These are some of the most common fields in certificates. Most certificates contain a number of fields not listed here. Note that in terms of a certificate's X.509 representation, a certificate is not "flat" but contains these fields nested in various structures within the certificate.

• Serial Number: Used to uniquely identify the certificate within a CA's systems. In particular this is used to track revocation information.
• Subject: The entity a certificate belongs to: a machine, an individual, or an organization.
• Issuer: The entity that verified the information and signed the certificate.
• Not Before: The earliest time and date on which the certificate is valid. Usually set to a few hours or days prior to the moment the certificate was issued, to avoid clock skew problems.
• Not After: The time and date past which the certificate is no longer valid.
• Key Usage: The valid cryptographic uses of the certificate's public key. Common values include digital signature validation, key encipherment, and certificate signing.
• Extended Key Usage: The applications in which the certificate may be used. Common values include TLS server authentication, email protection, and code signing.
• Public Key: A public key belonging to the certificate subject.
• Signature Algorithm: The algorithm used to sign the public key certificate.
• Signature: A signature of the certificate body by the issuer's private key.

Sample certificate

This is an example of a decoded SSL/TLS certificate retrieved from SSL.com's website. The issuer's common name (CN) is shown as SSL.com EV SSL Intermediate CA RSA R3, identifying this as an Extended Validation (EV) certificate. Validated information about the website's owner (SSL Corp) is located in the Subject field. The X509v3 Subject Alternative Name field contains a list of domain names covered by the certificate. The X509v3 Extended Key Usage and X509v3 Key Usage fields show all appropriate uses.

Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number:
            72:14:11:d3:d7:e0:fd:02:aa:b0:4e:90:09:d4:db:31
        Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: C=US, ST=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corp, CN=SSL.com EV SSL Intermediate CA RSA R3
        Validity
            Not Before: Apr 18 22:15:06 2019 GMT
            Not After : Apr 17 22:15:06 2021 GMT
        Subject: C=US, ST=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corp/serialNumber=NV20081614243, CN=www.ssl.com/postalCode=77098/businessCategory=Private Organization/street=3100 Richmond Ave/jurisdictionST=Nevada/jurisdictionC=US
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
                RSA Public-Key: (2048 bit)
                Modulus:
                    00:ad:0f:ef:c1:97:5a:9b:d8:1e ...
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
        X509v3 extensions:
            X509v3 Authority Key Identifier: 
                keyid:BF:C1:5A:87:FF:28:FA:41:3D:FD:B7:4F:E4:1D:AF:A0:61:58:29:BD

            Authority Information Access: 
                CA Issuers - URI:http://www.ssl.com/repository/SSLcom-SubCA-EV-SSL-RSA-4096-R3.crt
                OCSP - URI:http://ocsps.ssl.com

            X509v3 Subject Alternative Name: 
                DNS:www.ssl.com, DNS:answers.ssl.com, DNS:faq.ssl.com, DNS:info.ssl.com, DNS:links.ssl.com, DNS:reseller.ssl.com, DNS:secure.ssl.com, DNS:ssl.com, DNS:support.ssl.com, DNS:sws.ssl.com, DNS:tools.ssl.com
            X509v3 Certificate Policies: 
                Policy: 2.23.140.1.1
                Policy: 1.2.616.1.113527.2.5.1.1
                Policy: 1.3.6.1.4.1.38064.1.1.1.5
                  CPS: https://www.ssl.com/repository

            X509v3 Extended Key Usage: 
                TLS Web Client Authentication, TLS Web Server Authentication
            X509v3 CRL Distribution Points:

                Full Name:
                  URI:http://crls.ssl.com/SSLcom-SubCA-EV-SSL-RSA-4096-R3.crl

            X509v3 Subject Key Identifier: 
                E7:37:48:DE:7D:C2:E1:9D:D0:11:25:21:B8:00:33:63:06:27:C1:5B
            X509v3 Key Usage: critical
                Digital Signature, Key Encipherment
            CT Precertificate SCTs: 
                Signed Certificate Timestamp:
                    Version   : v1 (0x0)
                    Log ID    : 87:75:BF:E7:59:7C:F8:8C:43:99 ...
                    Timestamp : Apr 18 22:25:08.574 2019 GMT
                    Extensions: none
                    Signature : ecdsa-with-SHA256
                                30:44:02:20:40:51:53:90:C6:A2 ...
                Signed Certificate Timestamp:
                    Version   : v1 (0x0)
                    Log ID    : A4:B9:09:90:B4:18:58:14:87:BB ...
                    Timestamp : Apr 18 22:25:08.461 2019 GMT
                    Extensions: none
                    Signature : ecdsa-with-SHA256
                                30:45:02:20:43:80:9E:19:90:FD ...
                Signed Certificate Timestamp:
                    Version   : v1 (0x0)
                    Log ID    : 55:81:D4:C2:16:90:36:01:4A:EA ...
                    Timestamp : Apr 18 22:25:08.769 2019 GMT
                    Extensions: none
                    Signature : ecdsa-with-SHA256
                                30:45:02:21:00:C1:3E:9F:F0:40 ...
    Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
         36:07:e7:3b:b7:45:97:ca:4d:6c ...

Usage in the European Union

In the European Union, electronic signatures on legal documents are commonly performed using digital signatures with accompanying identity certificates. This is largely because such signatures are granted the same enforceability as handwritten signatures under eIDAS, an EU regulation.

Certificate authorities

The procedure of obtaining a Public key certificate

In the X.509 trust model, a certificate authority (CA) is responsible for signing certificates. These certificates act as an introduction between two parties, which means that a CA acts as a trusted third party. A CA processes requests from people or organizations requesting certificates (called subscribers), verifies the information, and potentially signs an end-entity certificate based on that information. To perform this role effectively, a CA needs to have one or more broadly trusted root certificates or intermediate certificates and the corresponding private keys. CAs may achieve this broad trust by having their root certificates included in popular software, or by obtaining a cross-signature from another CA delegating trust. Other CAs are trusted within a relatively small community, like a business, and are distributed by other mechanisms like Windows Group Policy.

Certificate authorities are also responsible for maintaining up-to-date revocation information about certificates they have issued, indicating whether certificates are still valid. They provide this information through Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) and/or Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs). Some of the larger certificate authorities in the market include IdenTrust, DigiCert, and Sectigo.

Root programs

Some major software contain a list of certificate authorities that are trusted by default. This makes it easier for end-users to validate certificates, and easier for people or organizations that request certificates to know which certificate authorities can issue a certificate that will be broadly trusted. This is particularly important in HTTPS, where a web site operator generally wants to get a certificate that is trusted by nearly all potential visitors to their web site.

The policies and processes a provider uses to decide which certificate authorities their software should trust are called root programs. The most influential root programs are:

• Microsoft Root Program
• Apple Root Program
• Mozilla Root Program
• Oracle Java root program
• Adobe AATL Adobe Approved Trust List and EUTL root programs (used for document signing)

Browsers other than Firefox generally use the operating system's facilities to decide which certificate authorities are trusted. So, for instance, Chrome on Windows trusts the certificate authorities included in the Microsoft Root Program, while on macOS or iOS, Chrome trusts the certificate authorities in the Apple Root Program. Edge and Safari use their respective operating system trust stores as well, but each is only available on a single OS. Firefox uses the Mozilla Root Program trust store on all platforms.

The Mozilla Root Program is operated publicly, and its certificate list is part of the open source Firefox web browser, so it is broadly used outside Firefox. For instance, while there is no common Linux Root Program, many Linux distributions, like Debian, include a package that periodically copies the contents of the Firefox trust list, which is then used by applications.

Root programs generally provide a set of valid purposes with the certificates they include. For instance, some CAs may be considered trusted for issuing TLS server certificates, but not for code signing certificates. This is indicated with a set of trust bits in a root certificate storage system.

Certificates and website security

The most common use of certificates is for HTTPS-based web sites. A web browser validates that an HTTPS web server is authentic, so that the user can feel secure that his/her interaction with the web site has no eavesdroppers and that the web site is who it claims to be. This security is important for electronic commerce. In practice, a web site operator obtains a certificate by applying to a certificate authority with a certificate signing request. The certificate request is an electronic document that contains the web site name, company information and the public key. The certificate provider signs the request, thus producing a public certificate. During web browsing, this public certificate is served to any web browser that connects to the web site and proves to the web browser that the provider believes it has issued a certificate to the owner of the web site.

As an example, when a user connects to https://www.example.com/ with their browser, if the browser does not give any certificate warning message, then the user can be theoretically sure that interacting with https://www.example.com/ is equivalent to interacting with the entity in contact with the email address listed in the public registrar under "example.com", even though that email address may not be displayed anywhere on the web site. No other surety of any kind is implied. Further, the relationship between the purchaser of the certificate, the operator of the web site, and the generator of the web site content may be tenuous and is not guaranteed. At best, the certificate guarantees uniqueness of the web site, provided that the web site itself has not been compromised (hacked) or the certificate issuing process subverted.

A certificate provider can opt to issue three types of certificates, each requiring its own degree of vetting rigor. In order of increasing rigor (and naturally, cost) they are: Domain Validation, Organization Validation and Extended Validation. These rigors are loosely agreed upon by voluntary participants in the CA/Browser Forum.

Validation levels

Domain validation

A certificate provider will issue a Domain Validation (DV) class certificate to a purchaser if the purchaser can demonstrate one vetting criterion: the right to administratively manage a domain name.

Organization validation

A certificate provider will issue an Organization Validation (OV) class certificate to a purchaser if the purchaser can meet two criteria: the right to administratively manage the domain name in question, and perhaps, the organization's actual existence as a legal entity. A certificate provider publishes its OV vetting criteria through its Certificate Policy.

Extended validation

To acquire an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, the purchaser must persuade the certificate provider of its legal identity, including manual verification checks by a human. As with OV certificates, a certificate provider publishes its EV vetting criteria through its Certificate Policy.

Browsers will generally offer users a visual indication of the legal identity when a site presents an EV certificate. Most browsers show the legal name before the domain, and use a bright green color to highlight the change. In this way, the user can see the legal identity of the owner has been verified.

Weaknesses

A web browser will give no warning to the user if a web site suddenly presents a different certificate, even if that certificate has a lower number of key bits, even if it has a different provider, and even if the previous certificate had an expiry date far into the future. However a change from an EV certificate to a non-EV certificate will be apparent as the green bar will no longer be displayed. Where certificate providers are under the jurisdiction of governments, those governments may have the freedom to order the provider to generate any certificate, such as for the purposes of law enforcement. Subsidiary wholesale certificate providers also have the freedom to generate any certificate.

All web browsers come with an extensive built-in list of trusted root certificates, many of which are controlled by organizations that may be unfamiliar to the user. Each of these organizations is free to issue any certificate for any web site and have the guarantee that web browsers that include its root certificates will accept it as genuine. In this instance, end users must rely on the developer of the browser software to manage its built-in list of certificates and on the certificate providers to behave correctly and to inform the browser developer of problematic certificates. While uncommon, there have been incidents in which fraudulent certificates have been issued: in some cases, the browsers have detected the fraud; in others, some time passed before browser developers removed these certificates from their software.

The list of built-in certificates is also not limited to those provided by the browser developer: users (and to a degree applications) are free to extend the list for special purposes such as for company intranets. This means that if someone gains access to a machine and can install a new root certificate in the browser, that browser will recognize websites that use the inserted certificate as legitimate.

For provable security, this reliance on something external to the system has the consequence that any public key certification scheme has to rely on some special setup assumption, such as the existence of a certificate authority.

Usefulness versus unsecured web sites

In spite of the limitations described above, certificate-authenticated TLS is considered mandatory by all security guidelines whenever a web site hosts confidential information or performs material transactions. This is because, in practice, in spite of the weaknesses described above, web sites secured by public key certificates are still more secure than unsecured http:// web sites.

Standards

The National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) Computer Security Division provides guidance documents for Public Key Certificates:

• SP 800-32 Introduction to Public Key Technology and the Federal PKI Infrastructure
• SP 800-25 Federal Agency Use of Public Key Technology for Digital Signatures and Authentication

Public key infrastructure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure 

 

Diagram of a public key infrastructure

A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred.

In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective identities of entities (like people and organizations). The binding is established through a process of registration and issuance of certificates at and by a certificate authority (CA). Depending on the assurance level of the binding, this may be carried out by an automated process or under human supervision.

The PKI role that assures valid and correct registration is called a registration authority (RA). An RA is responsible for accepting requests for digital certificates and authenticating the entity making the request. In a Microsoft PKI, a registration authority is usually called a subordinate CA.

An entity must be uniquely identifiable within each CA domain on the basis of information about that entity. A third-party validation authority (VA) can provide this entity information on behalf of the CA. 

The X.509 standard defines the most commonly used format for public key certificates.

Design

Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network, and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures.

A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed.

A PKI consists of:

• A certificate authority (CA) that stores, issues and signs the digital certificates;
• A registration authority (RA) which verifies the identity of entities requesting their digital certificates to be stored at the CA;
• A central directory—i.e., a secure location in which keys are stored and indexed;
• A certificate management system managing things like the access to stored certificates or the delivery of the certificates to be issued;
• A certificate policy stating the PKI's requirements concerning its procedures. Its purpose is to allow outsiders to analyze the PKI's trustworthiness.

Methods of certification

Broadly speaking, there have traditionally been three approaches to getting this trust: certificate authorities (CAs), web of trust (WoT), and simple public key infrastructure (SPKI).

Certificate authorities

The primary role of the CA is to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CA's key. When the CA is a third party separate from the user and the system, then it is called the Registration Authority (RA), which may or may not be separate from the CA. The key-to-user binding is established, depending on the level of assurance the binding has, by software or under human supervision.

The term trusted third party (TTP) may also be used for certificate authority (CA). Moreover, PKI is itself often used as a synonym for a CA implementation.

Issuer market share

In this model of trust relationships, a CA is a trusted third party – trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. 

According to NetCraft report from 2015, the industry standard for monitoring Active Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates, states that- "Although the global [TLS] ecosystem is competitive, it is dominated by a handful of major CAs — three certificate authorities (Symantec, Sectigo, GoDaddy) account for three-quarters of all issued [TLS] certificates on public-facing web servers. The top spot has been held by Symantec (or VeriSign before it was purchased by Symantec) ever since [our] survey began, with it currently accounting for just under a third of all certificates. To illustrate the effect of differing methodologies, amongst the million busiest sites Symantec issued 44% of the valid, trusted certificates in use — significantly more than its overall market share." 

Following to major issues in how certificate issuing were managed, all major players gradually distrusted Symantec issued certificates starting from 2017.

Temporary certificates and single sign-on

This approach involves a server that acts as an offline certificate authority within a single sign-on system. A single sign-on server will issue digital certificates into the client system, but never stores them. Users can execute programs, etc. with the temporary certificate. It is common to find this solution variety with X.509-based certificates.

Web of trust

An alternative approach to the problem of public authentication of public key information is the web-of-trust scheme, which uses self-signed certificates and third party attestations of those certificates. The singular term "web of trust" does not imply the existence of a single web of trust, or common point of trust, but rather one of any number of potentially disjoint "webs of trust". Examples of implementations of this approach are PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GnuPG (an implementation of OpenPGP, the standardized specification of PGP). Because PGP and implementations allow the use of e-mail digital signatures for self-publication of public key information, it is relatively easy to implement one's own web of trust.

One of the benefits of the web of trust, such as in PGP, is that it can inter-operate with a PKI CA fully trusted by all parties in a domain (such as an internal CA in a company) that is willing to guarantee certificates, as a trusted introducer. If the "web of trust" is completely trusted then, because of the nature of a web of trust, trusting one certificate is granting trust to all the certificates in that web. A PKI is only as valuable as the standards and practices that control the issuance of certificates and including PGP or a personally instituted web of trust could significantly degrade the trustworthiness of that enterprise's or domain's implementation of PKI.

The web of trust concept was first put forth by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann in 1992 in the manual for PGP version 2.0:

As time goes on, you will accumulate keys from other people that you may want to designate as trusted introducers. Everyone else will each choose their own trusted introducers. And everyone will gradually accumulate and distribute with their key a collection of certifying signatures from other people, with the expectation that anyone receiving it will trust at least one or two of the signatures. This will cause the emergence of a decentralized fault-tolerant web of confidence for all public keys.

Simple public key infrastructure

Another alternative, which does not deal with public authentication of public key information, is the simple public key infrastructure (SPKI) that grew out of three independent efforts to overcome the complexities of X.509 and PGP's web of trust. SPKI does not associate users with persons, since the key is what is trusted, rather than the person. SPKI does not use any notion of trust, as the verifier is also the issuer. This is called an "authorization loop" in SPKI terminology, where authorization is integral to its design. This type of PKI is specially useful for making integrations of PKI that do not rely on third parties for certificate authorization, certificate information, etc.; A good example of this is an Air-gapped network in an office.

Blockchain-based PKI

An emerging approach for PKI is to use the blockchain technology commonly associated with modern cryptocurrency. Since blockchain technology aims to provide a distributed and unalterable ledger of information, it has qualities considered highly suitable for the storage and management of public keys. Some cryptocurrencies support the storage of different public key types (SSH, GPG, RFC 2230, etc.) and provides open source software that directly supports PKI for OpenSSH servers. While blockchain technology can approximate the proof of work often underpinning the confidence in trust that relying parties have in a PKI, issues remain such as administrative conformance to policy, operational security and software implementation quality. A Certificate Authority paradigm has these issues regardless of the underlying cryptographic methods and algorithms employed, and PKI that seeks to endow certificates with trustworthy properties must also address these issues.

Here is a list of known Blockchain-based PKI:

• CertCoin
• FlyClient
• BlockQuick

History

Developments in PKI occurred in the early 1970s at the British intelligence agency GCHQ, where James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and others made important discoveries related to encryption algorithms and key distribution. Because developments at GCHQ are highly classified, the results of this work were kept secret and not publicly acknowledged until the mid-1990s. 

The public disclosure of both secure key exchange and asymmetric key algorithms in 1976 by Diffie, Hellman, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman changed secure communications entirely. With the further development of high-speed digital electronic communications (the Internet and its predecessors), a need became evident for ways in which users could securely communicate with each other, and as a further consequence of that, for ways in which users could be sure with whom they were actually interacting.

Assorted cryptographic protocols were invented and analyzed within which the new cryptographic primitives could be effectively used. With the invention of the World Wide Web and its rapid spread, the need for authentication and secure communication became still more acute. Commercial reasons alone (e.g., e-commerce, online access to proprietary databases from web browsers) were sufficient. Taher Elgamal and others at Netscape developed the SSL protocol ('https' in Web URLs); it included key establishment, server authentication (prior to v3, one-way only), and so on. A PKI structure was thus created for Web users/sites wishing secure communications.

Vendors and entrepreneurs saw the possibility of a large market, started companies (or new projects at existing companies), and began to agitate for legal recognition and protection from liability. An American Bar Association technology project published an extensive analysis of some of the foreseeable legal aspects of PKI operations (see ABA digital signature guidelines), and shortly thereafter, several U.S. states (Utah being the first in 1995) and other jurisdictions throughout the world began to enact laws and adopt regulations. Consumer groups raised questions about privacy, access, and liability considerations, which were more taken into consideration in some jurisdictions than in others.

The enacted laws and regulations differed, there were technical and operational problems in converting PKI schemes into successful commercial operation, and progress has been much slower than pioneers had imagined it would be.

By the first few years of the 21st century, the underlying cryptographic engineering was clearly not easy to deploy correctly. Operating procedures (manual or automatic) were not easy to correctly design (nor even if so designed, to execute perfectly, which the engineering required). The standards that existed were insufficient.

PKI vendors have found a market, but it is not quite the market envisioned in the mid-1990s, and it has grown both more slowly and in somewhat different ways than were anticipated. PKIs have not solved some of the problems they were expected to, and several major vendors have gone out of business or been acquired by others. PKI has had the most success in government implementations; the largest PKI implementation to date is the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) PKI infrastructure for the Common Access Cards program.

Uses

PKIs of one type or another, and from any of several vendors, have many uses, including providing public keys and bindings to user identities which are used for:

• Encryption and/or sender authentication of e-mail messages (e.g., using OpenPGP or S/MIME);
• Encryption and/or authentication of documents (e.g., the XML Signature or XML Encryption standards if documents are encoded as XML);
• Authentication of users to applications (e.g., smart card logon, client authentication with SSL). There's experimental usage for digitally signed HTTP authentication in the Enigform and mod_openpgp projects;
• Bootstrapping secure communication protocols, such as Internet key exchange (IKE) and SSL. In both of these, initial set-up of a secure channel (a "security association") uses asymmetric key—i.e., public key—methods, whereas actual communication uses faster symmetric key—i.e., secret key—methods;
• Mobile signatures are electronic signatures that are created using a mobile device and rely on signature or certification services in a location independent telecommunication environment;
• Internet of things requires secure communication between mutually trusted devices. A public key infrastructure enables devices to obtain and renew X509 certificates which are used to establish trust between devices and encrypt communications using TLS.

Open source implementations

• OpenSSL is the simplest form of CA and tool for PKI. It is a toolkit, developed in C, that is included in all major Linux distributions, and can be used both to build your own (simple) CA and to PKI-enable applications. (Apache licensed)
• EJBCA is a full featured, Enterprise grade, CA implementation developed in Java. It can be used to set up a CA both for internal use and as a service. (LGPL licensed)
• XiPKI, CA and OCSP responder. With SHA3 support, implemented in Java. (Apache licensed)
• OpenCA is a full featured CA implementation using a number of different tools. OpenCA uses OpenSSL for the underlying PKI operations.
• XCA is a graphical interface, and database. XCA uses OpenSSL for the underlying PKI operations.
• (Discontinued) TinyCA was a graphical interface for OpenSSL.
• IoT_pki is a simple PKI built using the python cryptography library
• DogTag is a full featured CA developed and maintained as part of the Fedora Project.
• CFSSL open source toolkit developed by CloudFlare for signing, verifying, and bundling TLS certificates. (BSD 2-clause licensed)
• Vault tool for securely managing secrets (TLS certificates included) developed by HashiCorp. (Mozilla Public License 2.0 licensed)
• Libhermetik is a self-contained public-key infrastructure system embedded in a C-language library. Hermetik utilizes LibSodium for all cryptographic operations, and SQLite for all data persistence operations. The software is open-source and released under the ISC license.

Criticism

Some argue that purchasing certificates for securing websites by SSL and securing software by code signing is a costly venture for small businesses. However, the emergence of free alternatives such as Let's Encrypt, has changed this. HTTP/2, the latest version of HTTP protocol allows unsecured connections in theory, in practice major browser companies have made it clear that they would support this protocol only over a PKI secured TLS connection. Web browser implementation of HTTP/2 including Edge from Microsoft, Chrome from Google, Firefox from Mozilla, and Opera supports HTTP/2 only over TLS by using ALPN extension of TLS protocol. This would mean that to get the speed benefits of HTTP/2, website owners would be forced to purchase SSL certificates controlled by corporations.

Current web browsers carry pre-installed intermediary certificates issued and signed by a Certificate Authority. This means browsers need to carry a large number of different certificate providers, increasing the risk of a key compromise.

When a key is known to be compromised it could be fixed by revoking the certificate, but such a compromise is not easily detectable and can be a huge security breach. Browsers have to issue a security patch to revoke intermediary certificates issued by a compromised root certificate authority. Some practical security vulnerabilities of X.509 certificates and known cases where keys were stolen from a major Certificate Authority are listed below.

• See PKI security issues with X.509
• See Breach of Comodo CA
• See Breach of Diginotar CA

SAP ERP

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

ERP

Developer(s)	SAP SE
Written in	C, C++, ABAP/4
Type	ERP
Website	www.sap.com/products/erp.html

SAP ERP is enterprise resource planning software developed by the German company SAP SE. SAP ERP incorporates the key business functions of an organization. The latest version of SAP ERP (V.6.0) was made available in 2006. The most recent Enhancement Package (EHP8) for SAP ERP 6.0 was released in 2016.

Business Processes included in SAP ERP are Operations (Sales & Distribution, Materials Management, Production Planning, Logistics Execution, and Quality Management), Financials (Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Financial Supply Chain Management), Human Capital Management (Training, Payroll, e-Recruiting) and Corporate Services (Travel Management, Environment, Health and Safety, and Real-Estate Management).

Development

An ERP was built based on the former SAP R/3 software. SAP R/3, which was officially launched on 6 July 1992, consisted of various applications on top of SAP Basis, SAP's set of middleware programs and tools. All applications were built on top of the SAP Web Application Server. Extension sets were used to deliver new features and keep the core as stable as possible. The Web Application Server contained all the capabilities of SAP Basis.

A complete architecture change took place with the introduction of mySAP ERP in 2004. R/3 Enterprise was replaced with the introduction of ERP Central Component (SAP ECC). The SAP Business Warehouse, SAP Strategic Enterprise Management and Internet Transaction Server were also merged into SAP ECC, allowing users to run them under one instance. The SAP Web Application Server was wrapped into SAP NetWeaver, which was introduced in 2003. Architectural changes were also made to support an enterprise service architecture to transition customers to a Service-oriented architecture.

The latest version, SAP ERP 6.0, was released in 2006. SAP ERP 6.0 has since then been updated through SAP enhancement packs, the most recent: SAP enhancement package 8 for SAP ERP 6.0 in 2016.

Implementation

SAP ERP consists of several modules, including Financial Accounting (FI), Controlling (CO), Asset Accounting (AA), Sales & Distribution (SD), Material Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), Quality Management (QM), Project System (PS), Plant Maintenance (PM), Human Resources (HR), Warehouse Management (WM).

• Phase 1 – Project Preparation
• Phase 2 – Business Blueprint
• Phase 3 – Realization
• Phase 4 – Final Preparation
• Phase 5 – Go Live Support

Deployment and maintenance costs

It is estimated that "for a Fortune 500 company, software, hardware, and consulting costs can easily exceed $100 million (around $50 million to $500 million). Large companies can also spend $50 million to $100 million on upgrades. Full implementation of all modules can take years", which also adds to the end price. Midsized companies (fewer than 1,000 employees) are more likely to spend around $10 million to $20 million at most, and small companies are not likely to have the need for a fully integrated SAP ERP system unless they have the likelihood of becoming midsized and then the same data applies as would a midsized company. Independent studies have shown that deployment and maintenance costs of a SAP solution can vary depending on the organization. For example, some point out that because of the rigid model imposed by SAP tools, a lot of customization code to adapt to the business process may have to be developed and maintained. Some others pointed out that a return on investment could only be obtained when there was both a sufficient number of users and sufficient frequency of use.

SAP Transport Management System

SAP Transport Management System (STMS) is a tool within SAP ERP systems to manage software updates, termed transports, on one or more connected SAP systems. The tool can be accessed from transaction code STMS. This should not be confused with SAP Transportation Management, a stand-alone module for facilitating logistics and supply chain management in the transportation of goods and materials.

SAP Enhancement Packages for SAP ERP 6.0 (SAP EhPs)

The latest version (SAP ERP 6.0) was made available in 2006. Since then, additional functionality for SAP ERP 6.0 has been delivered through SAP Enhancement Packages (EhP). These Enhancement Packages allow SAP ERP customers to manage and deploy new software functionality. Enhancement Packages are optional; customers choose which new capabilities to implement.

SAP EhPs do not require a classic system upgrade. The installation process of Enhancement Packages consists of two different steps:

• Technical installation of an Enhancement Package
• Activation of new functions

The technical installation of business functions does not change the system behavior. The installation of new functionalities is decoupled from its activation and companies can choose which business functions they want to activate. This means that even after installing a new business function, there is no change to existing functionality before activation. Activating a business function for one process will have no effect on users working with other functionalities. The most recent SAP Enhancement Package for SAP ERP 6.0 was EhP8, which was released in 2016. EhP8 delivers innovations and serves as a foundation to transition to SAP's new business suite: SAP S/4HANA.