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Certificates and Authentication
788
Red Hat Certificate System Administrator’s Guide • September 2005
Here is the same certificate displayed in the 64-byte-encoded form interpreted by software:
How CA Certificates Are Used to Establish Trust
Certificate authorities (CAs) are entities that validate identities and issue certificates. They
can be either independent third parties or organizations running their own certificate-issuing
server software (such as the Red Hat Certificate System).
Any client or server software that supports certificates maintains a collection of trusted CA
certificates. These CA certificates determine which other certificates the software can
validate—in other words, which issuers of certificates the software can trust. In the simplest
case, the software can validate only certificates issued by one of the CAs for which it has a
certificate. It’s also possible for a trusted CA certificate to be part of a chain of CA
certificates, each issued by the CA above it in a certificate hierarchy.
The sections that follow explains how certificate hierarchies and certificate chains
determine what certificates software can trust.
•
CA Hierarchies
•
Certificate Chains
•
Verifying a Certificate Chain
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIICKzCCAZSgAwIBAgIBAzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQQFADA3MQswCQYDVQQGEwJVUzER
MA8GA1UEChMITmV0c2NhcGUxFTATBgNVBAsTDFN1cHJpeWEncyBDQTAeFw05NzEw
MTgwMTM2MjVaFw05OTEwMTgwMTM2MjVaMEgxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMREwDwYDVQQK
EwhOZXRzY2FwZTENMAsGA1UECxMEUHViczEXMBUGA1UEAxMOU3Vwcml5YSBTaGV0
dHkwgZ8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQADgY0AMIGJAoGBAMr6eZiPGfjX3uRJgEjmKiqG
7SdATYazBcABu1AVyd7chRkiQ31FbXFOGD3wNktbf6hRo6EAmM5/R1AskzZ8AW7L
iQZBcrX2Q6xJu2MPm/8WKuMOSGXelmHVChEqooCwfdiZywyZ
NMmrJgaoMa2MS6pUkfQVAgMBAAGjNjA0MBEGCEIBAQQEAwIAgDAfBgNV
HSMEGDAWgBTy8gZZkBhHUfWJMzYmyTANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQQFAAOBgQBt
I6/z07Z635DfzX4XbAFpjlRl/AYwQzTSYx8GfcNAqCqCwaSDKvsuj/vwbf91o3j3
UkdGYpcd2cYRCgKi4MwqdWyLtpuHAH18hHZ5uvi00mJYw8W2wUOsY0RC/a/IDy84
hW3WWehBUqVK5SY4/zJ4oTjx7dwNMdGwbWfpRqjd1A==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
Summary of Contents for CERTIFICATE 7.1 ADMINISTRATOR
Page 1: ...Administrator s Guide Red Hat Certificate System Version7 1 September 2005 ...
Page 22: ...22 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 128: ...Cloning a CA 128 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 368: ...ACL Reference 368 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 460: ...Constraints Reference 460 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...
Page 592: ...CRL Extension Reference 592 Red Hat Certificate System Administrator s Guide September 2005 ...