Viewing Certificate Details

This section provides a tutorial example on how to view certificate details when visiting an 'https' Web site in Firefox.

When you visit an "https" Web server, it will send its certificate to your browser. Server's certificate is needed by the browser for these 2 tasks:

Normally, your browser will do these 2 tasks automatically without your interaction. You don't need to know where is the server certificate and what's in the certificate.

But since I am interested to learn more about "https" communication, I want to see the server certificate. Here is what did on Firefox to see details of the server certificate.

1. Run Firefox and go to https://login.yahoo.com and wait for the log in page to be loaded.

2. Click the lock icon in front of the Web address. The Website info dialog box shows up.

3. Click the ">" on the "Connection" line, the certificate verification status shows up.

4. Click "More information..." button at the bottom. The Page Info dialog box shows up.

5. Click the "View Certificate" button. The Certificate Viewer dialog box shows up. The General tab tells me this information:

This certificate has been verified for the following uses:
 SSL Client Certificate
 SSL Server Certificate

Issued to
Common Name (CN)   *.login.yahoo.com
Organization (O)   Oath Inc.
...

Issued by
Common Name (CN)   DigiCert SHA2 High Assurance Server CA
Organization (O)   DigiCert Inc
...

Validity
Issued On          Sunday, August 18, 2019
Expires On         Saturday, February 15, 2020

Fingerprints
SHA-256 Fingerprint 57:61:...
SHA1 Fingerprint    39:8C...

6. If you click the Details tab, you will see more information about this certificate. See the picture below:

Mozilla Firefox - Certificate Detail View
Mozilla Firefox - Certificate Detail View

Cool. Now I see details of a real certificate for commercial uses.

While on the Details tab of the Certificate Viewer, you can also:

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Cryptography Terminology

 Cryptography Basic Concepts

 Introduction to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

 Introduction to DES Algorithm

 DES Algorithm - Illustrated with Java Programs

 DES Algorithm Java Implementation

 DES Algorithm - Java Implementation in JDK JCE

 DES Encryption Operation Modes

 DES in Stream Cipher Modes

 PHP Implementation of DES - mcrypt

 Blowfish - 8-Byte Block Cipher

 Secret Key Generation and Management

 Cipher - Secret Key Encryption and Decryption

 Introduction of RSA Algorithm

 RSA Implementation using java.math.BigInteger Class

 Introduction of DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)

 Java Default Implementation of DSA

 Private key and Public Key Pair Generation

 PKCS#8/X.509 Private/Public Encoding Standards

 Cipher - Public Key Encryption and Decryption

 MD5 Mesasge Digest Algorithm

 SHA1 Mesasge Digest Algorithm

 OpenSSL Introduction and Installation

 OpenSSL Generating and Managing RSA Keys

 OpenSSL Managing Certificates

 OpenSSL Generating and Signing CSR

 OpenSSL Validating Certificate Path

 "keytool" and "keystore" from JDK

 "OpenSSL" Signing CSR Generated by "keytool"

 Migrating Keys from "keystore" to "OpenSSL" Key Files

 Certificate X.509 Standard and DER/PEM Formats

 Migrating Keys from "OpenSSL" Key Files to "keystore"

 Using Certificates in IE

 Using Certificates in Google Chrome

Using Certificates in Firefox

 Visiting an "https" Web Site with Firefox

Viewing Certificate Details

 Managing Certificates in Certificate Stores

 Exporting Certificates Out of Firefox

 OpenSSL Viewing Certificates Exported from Firefox

 Importing CA Certificate into Firefox

 Importing Certificate Path into Firefox

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB