Digital Certificates
If you've ever set up a Web server that supports encrypted HTTP connections, you've probably had to obtain a digital certificate from a company such as Verisign. Digital certificates solve an important key-exchange problem: How can you be sure that someone's public key is what they say it is? To thwart possible man-in-the-middle attacks, you should have some piece of information at hand that you don't get from the network. In other words, if the only thing you know is what the network tells you, how do you know that the network is telling you the right things?
A digital certificate is just a digitally signed public key. A Web browser comes with some built-in knowledge about various certificate authorities, one of which is ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access