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glossary of SSL-related terms |
Certificate
(
aka
Digital Certificate)
- A
data record used for authenticating network entities such as a
server or a client. A certificate contains X.509 information pieces
about its owner (called the subject) and the signing
Certificate
Authority
(called the issuer), plus the owner’s public key and the
signature made by the CA. Network entities verify these signatures
using CA certificates.
- Certificate
(
aka
Certification) Authority (CA)
- A
trusted third party whose purpose is to sign certificates for
network entities it has authenticated using secure means. Other
network entities can check the signature to verify that a CA has
authenticated the bearer of a certificate.
- Certificate
Signing Request (CSR)
- An
unsigned certificate for submission to a
Certification
Authority,
which signs it with the Private
Key
of their CA Certificate
.
Once the CSR is signed, it becomes a real certificate.
- Cipher
- An
algorithm or system for data encryption. Examples are DES, IDEA,
RC4, etc.
- Configuration
Directive
- Most
Apache configuration directives are in the HTTPD.CONF file.
- Digital
Signature
- An
encrypted text block that validates a certificate or other file. A
Certificate
Authority
creates a signature by generating a hash of the
Public
Key
embedded in a Certificate
,
then encrypting the hash with its own Private
Key.
Only the CA’s public key can decrypt the signature, verifying
that the CA has authenticated the network entity that owns the
Certificate.
See
also,
Hash
Function
and Message
Digest.
- Distinguished
Name
A
DN is a series of name-value pairs, such as
uid=doe,
that uniquely identifies the certificate
subject.
- Fully-Qualified
Domain-Name (FQDN)
A
hostname and a domain name that can resolve to an IP address (for
example, h18000.www1.hp.com).
Hash
Function
A fixed-length
value created mathematically to identify data uniquely.
Message
Digest
- A
hash of a message, which can be used to verify that the contents of
the message have not been altered in transit. This principal is
employed in digital signatures.
- mod_ssl
- An
Open Source toolkit for enabling OpenSSL on Apache web server; see
http://www.modssl.org.
- OpenSSL
- The
Open Source toolkit for SSL/TLS; see
http://www.openssl.org/.
- Pass
Phrase
- The
word or phrase that protects private key files. It prevents
unauthorized users from encrypting them. Usually it’s just the
secret encryption/decryption key used for
Ciphers.
- PEM
(Privacy
Enhanced Mail)
- A
standard, predating S/MIME, for encrypting e-mail and authenticating senders.
Private
Key
- The
secret key in a Public
Key Cryptography
system, used to decrypt incoming messages and sign outgoing ones.
Public
Key
- The
publically available key in a Public
Key Cryptography
system, used to encrypt messages bound for its owner and to decrypt
signatures made by its owner.
- Public
Key Cryptography
- The
study and application of asymmetric encryption systems, which use
one key for encryption and another for decryption. A corresponding
pair of such keys constitutes a key pair. Also called Asymmetric Crypography.
- Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL)
- A
protocol created by Netscape Communications Corporation for general
communication authentication and encryption over TCP/IP networks. The
most popular usage is
HTTP
S -
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) using SSL.
- SSLeay
- The
original SSL/TLS implementation library developed by Eric A. Young.
- Symmetric
Cryptography
- The
study and application of
Ciphers
that use a single secret key for both encryption and decryption operations.
- Transport
Layer Security (TLS)
- The
successor protocol to SSL, created by the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) for general communication authentication and encryption
over TCP/IP networks. TLS version 1 and is nearly identical with SSL
version 3.
- X.509
- The
most widely used standard for digital certificates. It is
recommended by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) and
is used for SSL/TLS authentication.
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