The authentication which offers authentication service such as release key register and release key certificate look-up on the basis

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the two problems that a user acquires an unwanted public key certificate and has to make access many times to a CA(certificate authority), and to make it possible to acquire a necessary public key certificate by one time of access to the CA.;SOLUTION: The user prepares a CA service application (S1) including identification information of a public key certificate and information specifying whether or not a group of public key certificates is needed, and transmits the application to an authentication device (CA device), and the CA device decides 'need' or 'no need' of the information specifying whether or not a group of public key certificates is needed (S3), and in the case of 'need', the CA device returns the public key certificate (S4) shown by the identification information of the public key certificate and the public key certificate (S4) for verifying a digital signature of the authentication system contained in the public key certificate shown by the identification information of the public key certificate to a user device. Moreover, the decision (S3) turns out to be 'no need', only the public key certificate (S4) shown by the identification information of the public key certificate (S4) is returned to the user device.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2001,JPO