A Survey on X.509 Public-Key Infrastructure, Certificate Revocation, and Their Modern Implementation on Blockchain and Ledger Technologies

Cyber-attacks are becoming more common against Internet users due to the increasing dependency on online communication in their daily lives. X.509 Public-Key Infrastructure (PKIX) is the most widely adopted and used system to secure online communications and digital identities. However, different attack vectors exist against the PKIX system, which attackers exploit to breach the security of the reliant protocols. Recently, various projects (e.g., Let’s Encrypt and Google Certificate Transparency) have been started to encrypt online communications, fix PKIX vulnerabilities, and guard Internet users against cyber-attacks. This survey focuses on classical PKIX proposals, certificate revocation proposals, and their implementation on blockchain as well as ledger technologies. First, we discuss the PKIX architecture, the history of the World Wide Web, the certificate issuance process, and possible attacks on the certificate issuance process. Second, a taxonomy of PKIX proposals, revocation proposals, and their modern implementation is provided. Then, a set of evaluation metrics is defined for comparison. Finally, the leading proposals are compared using 15 evaluation metrics and 13 cyber-attacks before presenting the lessons learned and suggesting future PKIX and revocation research.