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                               SecuDE - Overview

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[Image] Problem

Authenticity and protection of privacy is an increasing concern of everyone as
electronic information storage and exchange is rapidly growing. Example
applications where security is needed are the privacy of sensitive e-mail,
unforgeable digitally signed electronic forms and contracts, encryption of
local files, network authentication, electronic data interchange, and software
distribution. The use of public-key cryptography makes authenticity achievable
and manageable in a large scale open electronic communication society.
SecuDE is a portable general-purpose security toolkit for Unix and MS-DOS
systems. The contribution of SecuDE to public domain for non-commercial use is
part of our effort to facilitate the open, authentic, and privacy preserving
electronic telecooperation between people.

[Image] General Features

SecuDE (Security Development Environment) is a security toolkit which
incorporates well known and established symmetric and public-key cryptography.
It offers a library of security functions and a well documented C API which
allows you to incorporate security into virtually any application, and a number
of ready-to-use utilities with the following features:

   * Basic cryptographic functions like RSA, DSA, DES, various hash functions,
     DSS and Diffie-Hellman key agreement,
   * Security functions for origin authentication, data integrity,
     non-repudation of origin, and data confidentiality purposes on the basis
     of digital signatures and symmetric and asymmetric encryption,
   * X.509 key certification functions, handling of certification pathes,
     cross-certification, certificate revocation,
   * Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS),
   * Utilities to sign, verify, encrypt and decrypt files,
   * Utilities and library functions for the operation of certification
     authorities (CA) and interaction between certifying CAs and certified
     users,
   * Utilities and library functions for PEM processing according to RFC 1421 -
     1424 (the PEM functions are well tailored so that implementation of
     non-RFC 1421 PEM functions, like MIME-PEM, should be easy),
   * An X/Motif tool: XMst - The graphical user interface to SecuDE,
   * Secure access to public X.500 Directories for the storage and retrieval of
     certificates, cross-certificates and revocation lists (integrated secured
     DUA using strong authentication and signed DAP operations),
   * Data representations according to ASN.1 BER and DER,
   * Integrity-protected and confidentiality-protected storage of all security
     relevant information of a user (secret keys, verification keys,
     certificates etc.) in a so called Personal Security Environment (PSE). A
     PSE typically contains the user's private and public key (the latter
     wrapped in an X.509 certificate), the public root key which the user
     trusts, the user's distinguished name, the user's login name, and the
     forward certification path to the user's root key. In addition, the PSE
     allows to securely store other's public keys after their validation
     (allowing henceforth to trust them like the root key without verifying
     them again), and certificate revocation lists (CRLs).
     SecuDE provides two different PSE realizations:
     A SmartCard environment, and a DES-encrypted Unix or MS-DOS directory.
     Both are only accessible through the usage of PINs (Personal
     Identification Numbers). Smartcards require a particular SmartCard
     environment to be purchased where RSA and DES cryptography is done in the
     SmartCard reader (information available on request).

[Image] SecuDE Privacy Enhanced Mail

An Internet Privacy Enhanced Mail implementation (PEM RFC 1421-1424) is part of
SecuDE. It provides a PEM filter which transforms any input text file into a
PEM formatted output file and vice versa, and which should be capable of being
easily integrated into Mail-UAs or CA tools.
SecuDE-PEM realizes all formats and procedures defined in the Internet
Specifications RFC 1421-1424 except that it only supports asymmetric key
management. It is possible to securely cache other's certificates and CRLs as
this is part of the general SecuDE functionality.
SecuDE-PEM supports the certification and CRL procedures defined in RFC 1424
and is integrated into the SecuDE CA functionality. As an additional
functionality which goes beyond RFC 1421 - 1424, SecuDE-PEM may be configured
with an integrated X.500 DUA which allows, for instance, automatic retrieval of
certificates and CRLs during the PEM de-enhancement process.

[Image] Condition of Use

The current version of SecuDE is SecuDE-4.4b0. It can be obtained in source
code from the ftp address given below. It may be used for any non-commercial
purpose free of charge provided that copyright notices be retained unaltered.
For commercial use, please contact GMD.
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created by Stephan Kolletzki , last modified: Wednesday, 10-May-1995