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Offline Root Certificate Authority
An offline root certificate authority is a certificate authority (as defined in the X.509 standard and ) which has been isolated from network access, and is often kept in a powered-down state. In a public key infrastructure, the chain of trusted authorities begins with the root certificate authority (root CA). Once the root CA is installed and its root certificate is created, the next action taken by the administrator of the root CA is to issue certificates authorizing intermediate (or subordinate) CAs. This creates the ability to issue, distribute and revoke digital certificates without the direct action of the root CA. Because the consequences of a compromised root CA are so great (up to and including the need to re-issue each and every certificate in the PKI), all root CAs must be kept safe from unauthorized access. A common method to ensure the security and integrity of a root CA is to keep it in an offline state. It is only brought online when needed for specific, infreq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Certificate Authority
In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard. One particularly common use for certificate authorities is to sign certificates used in HTTPS, the secure browsing protocol for the World Wide Web. Another common use is in issuing identity cards by national governments for use in electronically signing documents. Overview Trusted certificates can be used to create secure connections to a server via the Internet. A certificate is e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intermediate Certificate Authority
In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard. One particularly common use for certificate authorities is to sign certificates used in HTTPS, the secure browsing protocol for the World Wide Web. Another common use is in issuing identity cards by national governments for use in electronically signing documents. Overview Trusted certificates can be used to create secure connections to a server via the Internet. A certificate is e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Key Management
Key management refers to management of cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem. This includes dealing with the generation, exchange, storage, use, crypto-shredding (destruction) and replacement of keys. It includes cryptographic protocol design, key servers, user procedures, and other relevant protocols. Key management concerns keys at the user level, either between users or systems. This is in contrast to key scheduling, which typically refers to the internal handling of keys within the operation of a cipher. Successful key management is critical to the security of a cryptosystem. It is the more challenging side of cryptography in a sense that it involves aspects of social engineering such as system policy, user training, organizational and departmental interactions, and coordination between all of these elements, in contrast to pure mathematical practices that can be automated. Types of keys Cryptographic systems may use different types of keys, with some systems using more ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public-key Cryptography
Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems termed one-way functions. Security of public-key cryptography depends on keeping the private key secret; the public key can be openly distributed without compromising security. In a public-key encryption system, anyone with a public key can encrypt a message, yielding a ciphertext, but only those who know the corresponding private key can decrypt the ciphertext to obtain the original message. For example, a journalist can publish the public key of an encryption key pair on a web site so that sources can send secret messages to the news organization in ciphertext. Only the journalist who knows the corresponding private key can decrypt the ciphertexts to obtain the sources' messages—an eavesdropp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Certificate Authorities
In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard. One particularly common use for certificate authorities is to sign certificates used in HTTPS, the secure browsing protocol for the World Wide Web. Another common use is in issuing identity cards by national governments for use in electronically signing documents. Overview Trusted certificates can be used to create secure connections to a server via the Internet. A certificate is e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Web Of Trust
In cryptography, a web of trust is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP-compatible systems to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the centralized trust model of a public key infrastructure (PKI), which relies exclusively on a certificate authority (or a hierarchy of such). As with computer networks, there are many independent webs of trust, and any user (through their public key certificate) can be a part of, and a link between, multiple webs. The web of trust concept was first put forth by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann in 1992 in the manual for PGP version 2.0: Note the use of the word emergence in this context. The web of trust makes use of the concept of emergence. Operation of a web of trust All OpenPGP-compliant implementations include a certificate vetting scheme to assist with this; its operation has been termed a web of trust. OpenPGP certificates (which include on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-signed Certificate
In cryptography and computer security, self-signed certificates are public key certificates that are not issued by a certificate authority (CA). These self-signed certificates are easy to make and do not cost money. However, they do not provide any trust value. For instance, if a website owner uses a self-signed certificate to provide HTTPS services, people who visit that website cannot be certain that they are connected to their intended destination. For all they know, a malicious third-party could be redirecting the connection using another self-signed certificate bearing the same holder name. The connection is still encrypted, but does not lead to its intended target. In comparison, a certificate signed by a trusted CA prevents this attack because the user's web browser separately validates the certificate against the issuing CA. The attacker's certificate fails this validation. Self-signed certificates, however, have their own limited uses. They have full trust value when the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Certificate Revocation List
In cryptography, a certificate revocation list (or CRL) is "a list of digital certificates that have been revoked by the issuing certificate authority (CA) before their scheduled expiration date and should no longer be trusted". CRLs are no longer required by the CA/Browser forum, as alternate certificate revocation technologies (such as OCSP) are increasingly used instead. Nevertheless, CRLs are still widely used by the CAs. Revocation states There are two different states of revocation defined in RFC 5280: ; Revoked: A certificate is irreversibly revoked if, for example, it is discovered that the certificate authority (CA) had improperly issued a certificate, or if a private-key is thought to have been compromised. Certificates may also be revoked for failure of the identified entity to adhere to policy requirements, such as publication of false documents, misrepresentation of software behaviour, or violation of any other policy specified by the CA operator or its customer. The mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Key Ceremony
In cryptography, a key ceremony is a ceremony held to generate or use a cryptographic key. A public example is the signing of the DNS root zone for DNSSEC. Root Key Signing Ceremony In public-key cryptography and computer security, a root key ceremony is a procedure where a unique pair of public and private root keys is generated. Depending on the certificate policy, the generation of the root keys may require notarization, legal representation, witnesses, and "key holders" to be present, as the information on the system is the responsibility of the parties. A commonly recognized practice is to follow the SAS 70 standard for root key ceremonies. At the heart of every certificate authority (CA) is at least one root key or root certificate and usually at least one intermediate root certificate. A root key is a term for a unique passcode that must be generated for secure server interaction with a protective network, usually called the root zone. Prompts for information from this zo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Validation Authority
In public key infrastructure, a validation authority (VA) is an entity that provides a service used to verify the validity of a digital certificate per the mechanisms described in the X.509 standard and (page 69). The dominant method used for this purpose is to host a certificate revocation list for download via the HTTP or LDAP protocols. To reduce the amount of network traffic required for certificate validation, the OCSP protocol may be used instead. While a validation authority is capable of responding to a network-based request for a CRL, it lacks the ability to issue or revoke certificates. It must be continuously updated with current CRL information from a certificate authority In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. Thi ... which issued the certificates contained withi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extended Validation Certificate
An Extended Validation Certificate (EV) is a certificate conforming to X.509 that proves the legal entity of the owner and is signed by a certificate authority key that can issue EV certificates. EV certificates can be used in the same manner as any other X.509 certificates, including securing web communications with HTTPS and signing software and documents. Unlike domain-validated certificates and organization-validation certificates, EV certificates can be issued only by a subset of certificate authorities (CAs) and require verification of the requesting entity's legal identity before certificate issuance. As of February 2021, all major web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari) have menus which show the EV status of the certificate and the verified legal identity of EV certificates. Mobile browsers typically display EV certificates the same way they do Domain Validation (DV) and Organization Validation (OV) certificates. Of the ten most po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Key Infrastructure
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that ''binds'' public keys with respective identities of entities (like people and organizations). The binding is established through a process of registration and issuance of certificates at and by a certificate authority (CA). Depending on the assurance level of the binding, this may be carried out by an automa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
