Endpoint Security ?

Hi There

I am trying to grasp endpoint security, or actually more security/certiicates in general, at the moment i am trying to write a distributed service broker app, all the examples i have seen use certificates for the endpoint authentication.

Why must one create a certificate at each endpoint? Why can i not create a single certificate and let all endpoints use it ?

As you can imagine of this app gets distributed to hundreds of places creating a certificate at each one is a mission?

So can i use a single certificate for all endpoints authentication?

Thanx

The certificates based authentication (in general, not only for Service Broker) relies on the fact that the private key is a well guarded secret. Being a secret, proof of possesion of the private key (e.g. a cryptographic signature) can be used as proof of identity. The moment you're talking about multiple copies of the same private key, it's value as a identity proof is greatly diminished. It is impossible in practice to ensure the secrecy of the private key while is deployed at hundreds of sites.

What you can consider is to allow public connectivity to your server. That is, grant CONNECT to [Public] on the broker endpoint and grant SEND to [Public] on the target service. This allows anybody to connect ot the endpoint and anybody to send a message to the service (using anonymous dialog security).

If public connectivity is not acceptable, then you must create hundreds odf certificates and manage them. Using one certificate instead and copying the private key hundreds of time doesn't give you any real security: since your private key is very likely to be leaked outside your control, all you have is just a false sense of security.

HTH,
~ Remus