Editor's Note: This article was originally published in September First up are certificate signing requests CSRs. Generated on the same server you plan to install the certificate on, the CSR contains information e. It also contains the public key that will be included in your certificate and is signed with the corresponding private key.
The key pieces of information include the following. The legal name of your organization. Do not abbreviate and include any suffixes, such as Inc. Users are assured who they are downloading software from and can decide whether or not to trust the source.
What is a Code Signing Certificate? In addition the rogue server would also need the private key to decode the data sent using the public key by the client Otherwise what you say is correct and I do it frequently when testing certs sent by readers I just use the insecure option which turns off domain name checking but I have all certs and keys.
Hi Steve. Great explanation, thank you greatly. A small and possibly foolish question — Is it okay to share a CA certificate publicly? Or is that madness? Just a thought coming in my mind since I am new to this.
How a client initiates a session if there is no certificate on Clients end. Let say, if I am accessing a bank website, In that case how this will work without client certificate. All browsers come with CA certificates like verisign etc already installed these certificates are all you need to access your bank server. Clients are validated by providing a username and password and extra methods if two factor authentication is used. It is the client that wants to make sure that it is connected to the bank server and not an impostor.
The client will request the bank certificate and validate it. As Steve mentioned in his reply, the client browser comes loaded with CA certificates. These certificates are used to validate the bank certificate. Hi there, I can see public key in the browser by pressing F12 and exploring the certificate, where can I find same pub key in the server Is it encoded in the crt file?
Also I can see the private key in server. If you have access to the server then just open the files as they are usually plain text.
I was little bit confused about the concept here. We can see two files created, one certfile and another private key file. But We dont know where the pubkey file is. Is it embedded inside the crt file or resides at other location? I am comapairing this with creation of key pair for ssh. You have two key pairs an encryption key pair and a signature key pair. The private signature key of the CA is used to sign the server certificate which contains the public encryption key of the server.
Hope that helps Rgds Steve. Hi Steve, Many thanks from for such detailed explanation. But how actually it is done in detail? In answer to 1 the CA certificate contains all the information to verify the server certificate. If the server cert gets stolen in can be revoked making it invalid. The browser needs to check this. Hi Steve, Thanks for your post.
I have a general question.. When a CSR is created on a device I understand that a key is created too which stays on the device and the request goes to the CA for signing. If the device cannot create a CSR for some reason and the CA is used to produce a certificate on behalf of the device, then a certificate and keys are created which need to be transported back to device. Are the keys that are created and need to be transported to the device public or private?
Does the CA create a new key pair for this purpose? Does this method in any way compromise the CA? Regards, Phil. Hi The certificate is public but the key is private. Yes a key pair must be created to create the csr. Take a look here. Hi Steve This is a great website! My questions is — where can the private key be stored for a certificate?
I think we can use the Windows key store that we see with the windows MMC? Java has a store called CACerts — would any pvt key be stored in there?
How about in a Databse — does some software store pvt key in a DB? Martin Glad you find the site helpful. Question — I am currently setting up a connection between my company and around others, and I require each of their public certificates.
I have been asking them to send me their. Do you have any suggestions on how I can request their certificates in a different way? Thanks Steve! Good detailed concepts….
Thanks for the explanation. My mind used to go blank when ever my manager talks about certificate changes but it will not be the case anymore. Thank you SO much for this amazing explanation! Great informative article that breaks down a complex topic in easily understandable parts. One of the best I found on net so far. Thanks a ton! We use certbot letsencrypt. This was a shady area for me for years, not any more.
The better you know something, the simpler your explanation. I finally understand SSL and digital certs better now. Hi Steve, this is a very informative web page, thanks for that. It is the signature that checks that, But it is used in addition to encryption. You see that clearly in email where you encrypt and sign an email. Both are necessary for complete security.
This answers most of my questions, thanks for that. So no what i can do is sign certificates with the FQDN as the ip-address of the server which works and tell my iot-devices to hit the ip but becomes a mess maintaining and also will not have dos protection.
Sorry confused. Can you use the ask steve page and send me a request so that I can reply via email that way you can send me a sketch of the setup. Visit my profile to check it out. Thanks again…. My site is host with WIX. My registrar is GoDaddy. Need to renew my SSL. Hi Not sure what you mean by responsibility of host? The explanation is clear and it succeeds in having the right balance of high level and details, which is not easy.
One thing I would have liked to have a little bit more details about — how the public key is used to agree on the session key. This is the heart of the key distribution solution. It explains what a certificate fingerprint is but not its purpose. What is being verified? Considering that PGP public keys are in fact certificates, you may be interested in these questions too: What does key signing mean?
Bruno Bruno When certificate is sent, tbsCertificate is sent without any ecryption. It is sent in original form? Certificates only prove identity.
There's no reason to encrypt certificates, they only contain public information. Your browser confirms three things to know it is talking to the real Amazon: The server presented a certificate that was valid and signed by a key it trusts.
The certificate binds the identity "www. The server proves it possesses the private key corresponding to the certificate. David Schwartz David Schwartz 4, 23 23 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Podcast Explaining the semiconductor shortage, and how it might end. Does ES6 make JavaScript frameworks obsolete? Featured on Meta.
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