Chapter 18 Certificates
18.4 Technical Reference
This section provides technical background information about the topics covered in this chapter.
18.4.1 Private-Public Certificates
When using
These keys work like a handwritten signature (in fact, certificates are often referred to as “digital signatures”). Only you can write your signature exactly as it should look. When people know what your signature looks like, they can verify whether something was signed by you, or by someone else. In the same way, your private key “writes” your digital signature and your public key allows people to verify whether data was signed by you, or by someone else. This process works as follows.
1Tim wants to send a message to Jenny. He needs her to be sure that it comes from him, and that the message content has not been altered by anyone else along the way. Tim generates a public key pair (one public key and one private key).
2Tim keeps the private key and makes the public key openly available. This means that anyone who receives a message seeming to come from Tim can read it and verify whether it is really from him or not.
3Tim uses his private key to sign the message and sends it to Jenny.
4Jenny receives the message and uses Tim’s public key to verify it. Jenny knows that the message is from Tim, and that although other people may have been able to read the message,
5Additionally, Jenny uses her own private key to sign a message and Tim uses Jenny’s public key to verify the message.
18.4.2 Certification Authorities
A Certification Authority (CA) issues certificates and guarantees the identity of each certificate owner. There are commercial certification authorities like CyberTrust or VeriSign and government certification authorities. You can use the NWA to generate certification requests that contain identifying information and public keys and then send the certification requests to a certification authority.
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