SSL Certificates

SSL Certificates

The Secure Socket Layer protocol was created by Netscape to ensure secure transactions between web servers and browsers. The protocol uses a third party, a Certificate Authority (CA), to identify one end or both end of the transactions. This is in short how it works.

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SSL Certificates
SSL Certificates

Private Key/Public Key

One of the problem left is to know the public key of your correspondent. Usually you will ask him to send you a non confidential signed message that will contains his public key as well as a certificate.

The encryption using a private key/public key pair ensures that the data can be encrypted by one key but can only be decrypted by the other key pair. This is sometime hard to understand, but believe me it works. The keys are similar in nature and can be used alternatively: what one key encrypts, the other key pair can decrypt. The key pair is based on prime numbers and their length in terms of bits ensures the difficulty of being able to decrypt the message without the key pairs.

The Certificate

As You may have noticed, the certificate contains the reference to the issuer, the public key of the owner of this certificate, the dates of validity of this certificate and the signature of the certificate to ensure this certificate hasn't been tampered with. The certificate does not contain the private key as it should never be transmitted in any form whatsoever. This certificate has all the elements to send an encrypted message to the owner (using the public key) or to verify a message signed by the author of this certificate.

How do you know that you are dealing with the right person or rather the right web site. Well, someone has taken great length (if they are serious) to ensure that the web site owners are who they claim to be. This someone, you have to implicitly trust: you have his/her certificate loaded in your browser (a root Certificate). A certificate, contains information about the owner of the certificate, like e-mail address, owner's name, certificate usage, duration of validity,

SSL Certificates
SSL Certificates

The Symmetric key

Well, Private Key/Public Key encryption algorithms are great, but they are not usually practical. It is asymmetric because you need the other key pair to decrypt. You can't use the same key to encrypt and decrypt. An algorithm using the same key to decrypt and encrypt is deemed to have a symmetric key. A symmetric algorithm is much faster in doing its job than an asymmetric algorithm. But a symmetric key is potentially highly insecure. If the enemy gets hold of the key then you have no more secret information.

You must therefore transmit the key to the other party without the enemy getting its hands on it. As you know, nothing is secure on the Internet. The solution is to encapsulate the symmetric key inside a message encrypted with an asymmetric algorithm. You have never transmitted your private key to anybody, then the message encrypted with the public key is secure (relatively secure, nothing is certain except death and taxes). The symmetric key is also chosen randomly, so that if the symmetric secret key is discovered then the next transaction will be totally different.

Encryption algorithm

There are several encryption algorithms available, using symmetric or asymmetric methods, with keys of various lengths. Usually, algorithms cannot be patented, if Henri Poincare had patented his algorithms, then he would have been able to sue Albert Einstein... So algorithms cannot be patented except mainly in USA. OpenSSL is developed in a country where algorithms cannot be patented and where encryption technology is not reserved to state agencies like military and secret services. During the negotiation between browser and web server,

The applications will indicate to each other a list of algorithms that can be understood ranked by order of preference. The common preferred algorithm is then chosen. OpenSSL can be compiled with or without certain algorithms, so that it can be used in many countries where restrictions apply.

SSL Certificates

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