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Certificates and Authentication
Appendix B Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography 251
The “objects” signed with object signing technology can be applets or other Java
code, JavaScript scripts, plug-ins, or any kind of file. The “signature” is a digital
signature. Signed objects and their signatures are typically stored in a special file
called a JAR file.
Software developers and others who wish to sign files using object-signing
technology must first obtain an object-signing certificate.
For more information about support for object signing in Netscape products, see
Netscape Object Signing: Establishing Trust for Downloaded Software at the following
URL:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/signedobj/trust/owp.htm
Contents of a Certificate
The contents of certificates supported by Netscape and many other software
companies are organized according to the X.509 v3 certificate specification, which
has been recommended by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an
international standards body, since 1988.
Users don’t usually need to be concerned about the exact contents of a certificate.
However, system administrators working with certificates may need some
familiarity with the information provided here.
Distinguished Names
An X.509 v3 certificate binds a distinguished name (DN) to a public key. A DN is a
series of name-value pairs, such as
uid=doe
, that uniquely identify an entity—that
is, the certificate subject.
For example, this might be a typical DN for an employee of Netscape
Communications Corporation:
uid=doe,e=doe@netscape.com,cn=John Doe,o=Netscape Communications
Corp.,c=US
The abbreviations before each equal sign in this example have these meanings:
•
uid
: user ID
•
e
: email address
•
cn
: the user’s common name
•
o
: organization
•
c
: country