Loren Kohnfelder is best known for his MIT S.B. (BSCSE) thesis written in May 1978 describing a practical means of applying public key cryptography to secure network communications.

The Kohnfelder thesis introduced the terms Certificate and Certificate Revocation List as well as introducing numerous other concepts now established as important parts of Public Key Infrastructure

Public key infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure is a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective user identities by means of a certificate...

. The X.509

X.509

In cryptography, X.509 is an ITU-T standard for a public key infrastructure and Privilege Management Infrastructure . X.509 specifies, amongst other things, standard formats for public key certificates, certificate revocation lists, attribute certificates, and a certification path validation...

 certificate specification that provides the basis for SSL, S/MIME

S/MIME

S/MIME is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly RFCs. S/MIME was originally developed by RSA Data Security Inc...

and most modern PKI implementations are based on the Kohnfelder thesis.

External links

• Kohnfelder, Loren M., Towards a Practical Public-Key Cryptosystem, May 1978.