Delegation Issuing Service

This paper describes the concept of a delegation issuing service (DIS), which is a service that issues X.509 attribute certificates on behalf of an attribute authority (typically a manager). The paper defines the X.509 certificate extensions that are being proposed for the 2005 edition of X.509 in order to implement the DIS concept, as well as the additional steps that a relying party will need to undertake when validating certificates issued in this way. The paper also presents our initial experiences of designing a DIS to add to the PERMIS authorization infrastructure. The paper concludes by reviewing some of the previous standards work in delegation of authority and anticipating some of the further standardization work that is still required in the field of privilege management.