This four layer architecture defines four categories of basic add-in module security services. Basic services are required to meet the security needs of all applications. CSSM also supports the dynamic inclusion of APIs for new categories of security services, as required by selected, security-aware applications. These elective services are dynamically and transparently added to a running CSSM environment when required by an application. When an elective service is needed, CSSM attaches a module manager for that category of service and then attaches the requested add-in service module. Once attached to the system, the elective module manager is a peer with all other CSSM module managers. Applications interact uniformly with add-in modules of all types.
The four basic categories of security services modules are:
Cryptographic Service Providers (CSPs) are add-in modules, that perform cryptographic operations including encryption, decryption, digital signaturing, key pair generation, random number generation, and key exchange. Trust Policy (TP) modules implement policies defined by authorities, institutions, and applications, such as your Corporate Information Technology Group* (as a certificate authority) or MasterCard* (as an institution), or Secure Electronic Transfer (SET) applications. Each trust policy module embodies the semantics of a trust environment based on digital credentials. A certificate is a form of digital credential. Applications may use a digital certificate as an identity credential and/or an authorization credential. Certificate Library (CL) modules provide format-specific, syntactic manipulation of memory-resident digital certificates and certificate revocation lists. Data Storage Library (DL) modules provide persistent storage for certificates, certificate revocation lists, and other security-related objects.
Examples of elective security service categories are key recovery and audit logging.
Applications dynamically select the modules used to provide security services. These add-in modules can be provided by independent software and hardware vendors. A single add-in module can provide one or more categories of service. Modules implementing more than one category of service are called multi-service modules.
The majority of the CSSM API functions support service operations. Service operations are functions that perform a security operation, such as encrypting data, adding a certificate to a certificate revocation list, or verifying that a certificate is trusted/authorized to perform some action.
Modules can also provide services beyond those defined by the CSSM API. Module-specific operations are enabled in the API through pass-through functions whose behavior and use is defined by the add-in module developer. (For example, a CSP implementing signaturing with a fragmented private key can make this service available as a pass-through.) Existence as a pass-through function is viewed as a proving ground for potential additions to the CSSM APIs.
CSSM core services support:
The module management functions are used by applications and by add-in modules to support module installation, registration of module features and attributes, and queries to retrieve information on module availability and features.
Security context management provides runtime caching of user-specific, cryptographic state information for use by multi-step cryptographic operations, such as staged hashing. These operations require multiple calls to a CSP and produce intermediate state that must be managed. CSSM manages this state information for the CSP, enabling more CSPs to easily support multiple concurrent callers.
The CSSM Embedded Integrity Services Library (EISL) provides tamper resistant verification services. CSSM, add-in modules, and optionally applications use EISL to verify the identity and integrity of components of CDSA. Checkable components include: add-in service modules, CSSM itself, and in the future, applications that use CSSM. The EISL services focus on detecting impostors or unauthorized components and tampering of authorized components.
In summary, the direct services provided by CSSM through its API calls include:
Add-in modules are composed of module administration components and implementations of security service interfaces in one or more categories of service. Module administration components include the tasks required during module installation, attach, and detach. The number, categories, and contents of the service implementations are determined by the module developer.
Every module implementation shares certain administrative tasks which must be performed during module installation, attach, and detach. As part of module installation, the module developer must register information about the module's services with CSSM. This information is stored in the CSSM registry and may be queried by applications using the CSSM_GetModuleInfo function. On attach, the module's administrative responsibilities include bilateral authentication, module registration, and module initialization. Bilateral authentication is a protocol whereby a module insures the integrity of its own components and of CSSM prior to attaching into the system. Following bilateral authentication, the module registers its functions with CSSM and performs any initialization operations. When the module is detached, it performs any necessary cleanup actions.
The remainder of the module implements one or more sub-services in one or more categories of service. A module developer may choose to implement a single service, such as a CSP, or may provide multiple services, such as Trust Policy and Certificate Library services. Within a single category of service, a module may implement multiple sets of capabilities, called sub-services. For example, a module might implement two Trust Policy sub-services in a single module in order to provide for two levels of authorization.
Additional utility libraries may be provided by a module developer for use by other module developers. Utility libraries are software components which contain functions that may be useful to several modules. For example, a utility library which performs DER encoding might be useful to several modules providing certificate library services. The utility library developer is responsible for making the definition, interpretation, and usage of their library available to other module developers.
The calling application is responsible for the allocation and de-allocation of all memory that is passed into or out of the module. The application must register memory allocation and de-allocation upcalls with CSSM when it requests a module attach. These upcalls are passed to the module when the it calls the CSSM_RegisterServices function. These functions must be used whenever a module either allocates memory to be passed out of the module or de-allocates memory passed into the module.
Once bilateral authentication has been accomplished, the module uses CSSM_RegisterServices to register a function table with CSSM for each sub-service that it supports. The function tables consist of pointers to the sub-service functions supported by the module. During future function calls from the application, CSSM will use these function pointers to direct calls to the appropriate module sub-service.
Similarly, that same module with certificate library capabilities may be used by other CSSM add-in modules to implement their functionality. For example, Trust Policy modules may choose to perform the syntactic verification of trust by calling a module with certificate library functionality.
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