Abstract: The current document is directed to methods and systems for secure provisioning, publication, distribution, and utilization of public-key certificates. These methods and systems employ domain name system (“DNS”) servers implementing the DNS security extensions (“DNSSEC servers”), a publisher component, and additional client-side and server-side functionalities. Public-key certificates provided by the DNSSEC servers engender a high degree of trust, as their integrity is protected and can be readily authenticated by the cryptographic-digital-signature based chains of trust provided by the DNSSEC. The systems to which the current document is directed employ DNSSEC servers, a publisher component, and additional client-side and server-side functionalities, and are referred to as “Public-key certificate Distribution and Management Systems” (“CDMSs”).

Abstract: The current application is directed to methods and systems for secure distribution of public-key certificates using the domain name system with security extensions (“DNSSEC”), a publisher component, and additional client-side functionality. These methods and systems, when combined with public/private-key-based cryptography used for encrypting digitally encoded information, provides a computationally efficient and well-understood method and system for secure communications and digitally-encoded-information verification without current difficulties and inefficiencies attendant with distributing and managing the public keys used for encrypting digitally encoded information.