Certificates and Certificate Chains

This section describes what is a certificate and what is a certificate path. A certificate is a digitally signed statement from the issuer saying that the public key of the subject has some specific value.

Certificate: A digitally signed statement from the issuer saying that the public key of the subject has some specific value.

The above definition is copied from the JDK documentation. It has a couple of important terms:

X.509 Certificate - A certificate written in X.509 standard format. X.509 standard was introduction in 1988. It requires a certificate to have the following information:

How can you get a certificate for your own public key?

Certificate Chain: A series of certificates that one certificate signs the public key of the issuer of the next certificate. Usually the top certificate (the first certificate) is self-signed, where issuer signed its own public key.

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

Certificates and Certificate Chains

 What Is "keystore"?

 "keytool" - Command Line Tool

 Generating Private Keys

 Exporting and Import Certificates

 Generating CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

 Cloning Certificates with New Identities

 "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

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB