Proposed Technique for Addressing The Ban on Nationally Generated Digital Certificates in Countries under Technical and Information Blockade

Abstract

Due to the sanctions imposed on Syria on an ongoing basis, the most recent of which is the “Caesar Act,” which has affected Syria in general and in particular the information sector, and whose effects included the ban on the use of digital certificates (SSL Certificate); it has become impossible to use locally generated digital certificates granted by the National Authority for Information Technology Services in Syria, because browsers will not support the use of these certificates specific to this country. Syria has previously obtained, through the Ministry of Communications and Technology, in cooperation with a friendly country, the authority to issue national digital certificates and a national digital certificate generator. However, after the issuance of the “Caesar Act,” which stipulates in one of its paragraphs the imposition of information sanctions on Syria, the authentication of the Syrian digital certificate issuance authority has been prevented by international authentication authorities, including (VeriSign, Thawte, Geotrust, Comodo, Entrust, DigiCert, and others). Consequently, the authority to issue Syrian digital certificates becomes unreliable because international browsers will not accept their use except after obtaining electronic permission to certify their authenticity and reliability by international authentication authorities, and the latter will not grant acceptance due to sanctions. This research presents a proposed technique for addressing the aforementioned ban problem, by building an open-source web browser that does not depend on international authentication authorities to authenticate nationally generated digital certificates, but rather it breaks the connection with those international authentication authorities and ensures correct operation of using these national certificates.

Keywords

• chain of trust
• truststore
• keystore.