A Trusted Third Party (TTP), sometimes referred to as a Trusted Authority, is an entity within a given community that is trusted by all entities in that community to properly perform a particular service. In some architectures, the TTP must store and adequately protect long-term secrets. The compromise of such secrets will immediately render insecure all future communications in the network and may also render insecure all past communications protected by using those secrets; this situation will persist until new long-term secrets can be established. In some architectures the TTP may have the ability to read all messages. Typically, the service performed by the TTP will enhance the security of other messages or transactions between entities in the community; example services include key generation, entity authentication, time stamping, and notarization.
Examples of TTPs in well-known architectures include the Key Distribution Center (KDC) in Kerberos, the Certification Authority(CA)...
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References
Menezes, A., P. van Oorschot, and S. Vanstone (1997). Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Stinson, D. (1995). Cryptography: Theory and Practice. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
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© 2005 International Federation for Information Processing
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Adams, C. (2005). Trusted Third Party. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_441
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