Dynamic Certificate Pinning for Secure TLS Handshakes
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for establishing multiple secure connections to a TLS peer are inefficient, as they often require full validation of security certificates for each connection, which is costly and can create security vulnerabilities, while embedding certificates at build time limits validation to pre-determined peers and requires frequent updates.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a dynamic certificate pinning system where a client fully validates a security certificate once and stores it, allowing for abbreviated validation of subsequent connections by comparing the pinned certificate to new ones, thereby establishing secure connections efficiently and securely without requiring full validation for each new connection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If full validation of security certificates is performed for each connection, then security is improved, but computational intensity and time consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs full security certificate validation once during the initial connection establishment, storing the validated certificate in memory. This preliminary validation action eliminates the need to repeat the computationally intensive validation process for subsequent connections to the same server, thereby reducing time consumption while maintaining security.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a copy of the validated security certificate and stores it locally in memory. This copied certificate is then used for comparing subsequent certificates without requiring full validation again. The copying approach allows rapid verification while preserving the security guarantees of the original full validation process.
2Reliability
If full validation of security certificates is performed for each connection, then security is improved, but computational intensity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs the computationally intensive full validation of the security certificate once during the initial connection, before storing it in memory. This preliminary computational action avoids repeating heavy processing for subsequent connections, thereby reducing overall computational intensity and energy consumption while maintaining security standards.
Solution Approach 2:
By creating and storing a local copy of the validated certificate, the system eliminates the need to repeatedly perform full validation computations. The copying mechanism allows subsequent connections to use lightweight comparison operations instead of intensive validation, significantly reducing computational intensity and energy usage.
3Speed
If certificates are embedded at build time, then validation speed is improved, but adaptability to new peers deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically loads security certificates from remote servers at runtime rather than using static certificates embedded at build time. This dynamic approach allows the system to adapt to new peers and changing certificate authorities while maintaining fast validation speeds through local caching of recently validated certificates.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary validation of remote certificates and caches the validated copies locally. This preliminary action enables subsequent connections to new peers to be validated quickly using the cached certificates, achieving both fast validation speed and adaptability to dynamic peer environments.
4Reliability
If full validation is performed for each connection, then security is improved, but network interactions increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and stores the validated security certificate locally after the initial full validation process. By taking out the certificate validation result and storing it locally, the system eliminates the need for repeated network interactions during subsequent connections, reducing network traffic and time consumption while maintaining security through local verification.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer system including a memory, a network interface, and at least one processor is provided. The at least one processor can transmit, via the network interface, a first message to a server application to initiate a handshake process; receive, via the network interface, a first copy of a security certificate from the server application; determine whether the first copy is valid; store, in response to a determination that the first copy is valid, the first copy in the memory; establish an initial secure connection to the server application; transmit, via the network interface, a second message to the server application to request a subsequent secure connection to the server application; receive, via the network interface, a second copy of the security certificate from the server application; determine whether the second copy matches the first copy; and establish the subsequent secure connection to the server application.