Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

The Eviden KMS is a full-featured X.509 certificate authority capable of issuing, storing, validating, and revoking certificates for both classical and post-quantum algorithms.

Supported standards

Not supported

The following specifications are not currently implemented:

• Merkle Tree Certificates (IETF draft) — transparency-based certificate format.
• Composite Certificates (draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-sigs / draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-kem) — hybrid classical+PQC keys in a single certificate.
• Delta CRLs (RFC 5280 §5.4) — incremental CRLs containing only certificates revoked since the last full CRL baseline.

Certificate export formats

Certificates and their associated private keys can be exported in:

• PEM (.pem) — Base64-encoded, human-readable.
• DER (.der) — Binary ASN.1 encoding.
• PKCS#12 (.p12 / .pfx) — Bundled certificate + private key, password-protected.

Post-quantum algorithms

Algorithm identifiers (OIDs)

ML-DSA — signing (RFC 9881, FIPS 204)

SLH-DSA — signing (RFC 9909, FIPS 205)

ML-KEM — key encapsulation (RFC 9935, FIPS 203)

Key usage requirements

ML-DSA and SLH-DSA (signing algorithms)

Per RFC 9881 §5 and RFC 9909 §6:

• The keyUsage extension MUST be present and MUST be critical.
• It MUST include digitalSignature.
• For CA certificates: keyCertSign and cRLSign are added.

X509v3 Key Usage: critical
    Digital Signature

ML-KEM (key encapsulation algorithm)

Per RFC 9935 §5:

• The keyUsage extension MUST be present and MUST be critical.
• It MUST contain keyEncipherment and MUST NOT contain any other bit.

X509v3 Key Usage: critical
    Key Encipherment

Generating certificates with the CLI

Self-signed ML-DSA-44 certificate

ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm ml-dsa-44 \
  --subject-name "CN=My ML-DSA CA,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --days 365

The server will:

1. Generate an ML-DSA-44 key pair.
2. Issue a self-signed X.509 v3 certificate.
3. Automatically add a critical keyUsage extension with digitalSignature (per RFC 9881).
4. Return the certificate identifier.

CA-issued ML-KEM-512 certificate (RFC 9935)

First create an ML-DSA-44 CA:

# Step 1: create the CA certificate (self-signed ML-DSA-44)
CA_CERT_ID=$(ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm ml-dsa-44 \
  --subject-name "CN=PQC Root CA,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --days 3650 \
  | grep "Certificate ID" | awk '{print $NF}')

# Retrieve the CA private key ID from the certificate attributes
CA_SK_ID=$(ckms certificates export \
  --certificate-id "$CA_CERT_ID" \
  --output-format json-ttlv \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(next(l['LinkedObjectIdentifier'] for l in d.get('Link',[]) if l['LinkType']=='PrivateKeyLink'))")

Then issue an ML-KEM-512 leaf certificate signed by the CA:

# Step 2: create an ML-KEM-512 leaf certificate signed by the CA
ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm ml-kem-512 \
  --subject-name "CN=ML-KEM-512 Leaf,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --issuer-private-key-id "$CA_SK_ID" \
  --issuer-certificate-id "$CA_CERT_ID" \
  --days 365

The server will:

1. Generate an ML-KEM-512 key pair.
2. Issue an X.509 certificate signed by the ML-DSA-44 CA.
3. Automatically add a critical keyUsage extension with keyEncipherment only (per RFC 9935).

SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s self-signed certificate

ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm slh-dsa-sha2-128s \
  --subject-name "CN=SLH-DSA Test,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --days 365

RSA or EC self-signed certificate

# RSA 4096
ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm rsa4096 \
  --subject-name "CN=RSA CA,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --days 365

# NIST P-256
ckms certificates certify \
  --generate-key-pair \
  --algorithm nist-p256 \
  --subject-name "CN=EC CA,O=Acme,C=FR" \
  --days 365

Verifying certificates with OpenSSL 3.5+

OpenSSL 3.5+ supports all NIST PQC algorithms. Use the following commands to inspect and verify PQC certificates:

# Inspect the certificate
openssl x509 -text -noout -in ml-dsa-cert.pem

# Verify a leaf certificate against a CA certificate
openssl verify -CAfile ca-cert.pem leaf-cert.pem

Using the Web UI

The Eviden KMS Web UI exposes certificate generation through the Certificate Issuance and Renewal page at /ui/certificates/certs/certify.

• Select "4. Generate New Keypair".
• Choose an algorithm from the Key Algorithm dropdown (e.g. ML-DSA-44 (PQC), ML-KEM-512 (KEM), RSA-4096, NIST-P256).
• Enter a subject name.
• Optionally provide issuer key and certificate IDs for CA-signed certificates.

Cross-algorithm PKI

RFC 9881 and RFC 9935 explicitly support cross-algorithm PKI: the CA signing key does not need to match the subject key algorithm.

Examples of supported combinations:

Certificate lifecycle

All standard KMIP certificate lifecycle operations work with certificates:

See Revocation & CRL Distribution for CRL generation, automatic CDP injection, the public distribution endpoint, and the noRevAvail extension. See OCSP Responder for real-time, per-certificate revocation status.