8.1. Digital Certificates
Users of public-key applications and systems must be confident that the public key of a subject—a user, organization, or other entity, such as a service—is genuine, that is, that the associated private key is owned by the subject. Public-key certificates are used to establish trust. A public-key certificate is a binding of a public key to a subject, whereby the certificate is digitally signed by the private key of another entity, often called a Certification Authority (CA).
If the user does not have a trusted copy of the public key corresponding to the private key the CA used to sign the subject’s public-key certificate, another public-key certificate vouching for the signing CA is required. This logic can be applied ...
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