# Failures of public key infrastructure: 53 year survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05239 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05239/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jan 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Infrastructure for AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10114/) (2025)
- [BetaWeb: Towards a Blockchain-enabled Trustworthy Agentic Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13787/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Public Key Infrastructure existed in critical infrastructure systems since the expansion of the World Wide Web, but to this day its limitations have not been completely solved. With the rise of government-driven digital identity in Europe, it is more important than ever to understand how PKI can be an efficient frame for eID and to learn from mistakes encountered by other countries in such critical systems. This survey aims to analyze the literature on the problems and risks that PKI exhibits, establish a brief timeline of its evolution in the last decades and study how it was implemented in digital identity projects.