Target-Specific SSH Certificates for Scalable Cloud Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing SSH authentication methods in cloud environments are cumbersome and lack scalability, particularly in managing public keys across multiple servers, leading to administrative overhead and security challenges.
Innovation Solution
Implementing SSH certificates with target-specific principals, managed by a certificate authority, to streamline access control and authentication, using a connection agent to facilitate secure remote access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional public key authentication is used in SSH, then individual public keys can be managed on each server, but administrative overhead increases and scalability decreases in environments with many servers and users
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a Certificate Authority (CA) as an intermediary that issues SSH certificates containing target-specific principals. This CA mediates between users and multiple SSH servers, allowing a single certificate to authenticate access to multiple target systems without requiring individual key management on each server, thereby resolving the scalability vs. administrative overhead contradiction
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the authentication credential into distinct components: a base certificate for user identification and target-specific principals for resource authorization. This segmentation allows the authentication system to handle multiple targets efficiently through a single certificate structure, improving scalability while maintaining manageable complexity
2Ease of operation
If centralized certificate authority is implemented to manage SSH certificates, then key management is simplified and security is enhanced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The Certificate Authority is designed as a universal system that handles multiple functions: issuing certificates, managing target-specific principals, enabling revocation, and supporting expiration. By consolidating these functions into a single multi-functional CA system, the patent simplifies key management across the organization while the modular design prevents excessive system complexity
3Reliability
If traditional SSH authentication without target-specific principals is used, then access control is simpler, but security and access granularity are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by embedding target-specific principals within the certificate structure that contain authorization information tailored to specific resources or hosts. This allows the certificate to have different authentication properties for different targets, enhancing security and access granularity while the standardized principal format prevents excessive structural complexity
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for creating, managing, and using SSH certificates with one or more target-specific principals are disclosed. A certificate authority receives a certificate signing request that includes both a user identifier and a resource identifier. The user identifier identifies a user, and the resource identifier represents one or more target hosts. The certificate authority forms a target-specific principal for use in creating the certificate. The target-specific principal indicates both the user and the resource identifier representing the resource(s) for which access is requested. The resource identifier may represent a host class associated with more than one host. Once the certificate authority verifies that the user is entitled to access the requested resource(s), it generates the certificate, signs it, and returns it to the requesting device.