HAPTER 16 The Clock Before we begin the detailed discussion of key management in the next chapter, we need to discuss one more primitive function: the clock. At first glance, this is a decidedly un-c ryptogra phic primitive, but because the current time is often used in cryptographic systems, we need a reliable clock. 16.1 Uses for a Clock There are several cryptographic uses for a clock. Key management functions are often linked to deadlines. The current time can provide both a unique value and a complete ordering of events. We will discuss each of these uses in more detail. 16.1.1 Expiration In many situations, we want to limit the validity period of a document. In the real world, we often see limited validity periods too. Checks, open airline tickets, vouchers, coupons, and even copyrights all have limited validity periods. The standard way to limit the validity period of a digital document is to include the expiration time in the document itself. But to check whether a document has expired, we need to know the current time. Hence, the need for a clock. 259260 Part IV • Key Management 16.1 .2 Unique Value Another useful function of a clock-if its resolution is high enough -is to provide a unique value for a single machine. We've been using nonces in several places. The important property of a nonce is that any single value is never used twice, at least within some defined scope. Sometimes the scope is limited, such as the nonce we use in the secure channel, and the nonce can be generated using a counter. In other situations, the nonce has to be unique across reboots of the computer. There are two generic ways of generating nonce values. The first is to use the current time of the clock with some mechanism to ensure you never use the same time code twice The second is to . use a PRNG, which we discussed in some detail in Chapter 9. The disadvantage of using a random nonce is that it needs to be rather large. To achieve a...
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