If you are in need of an SSL certificate, chances are you’re wondering if you can get one for free. After all, why pay for it if a free one is available? While it is possible to get a free SSL certificate, it comes with significant limitations.
There are essentially 2 ways to get a free SSL certificate. The first way is to use a trial certificate and the second is to generate it yourself. Read more…
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In the previous articles of this series (What is an SSL Certificate Part 1 and What is an SSL Certificate Part 2), we discovered that certificates are signed by a certificate authority (CA). This creates the chain of trust. If you trust the CA, then you will also trust the certificates it has signed.
But what happens if the CA makes a mistake and lends its authority to a certificate by mistake? For example, let’s say an evil-doer tricks the CA into signing a certificate. Once the CA realizes its mistake, what can it do? The certificate has already been signed and is presumably being used for nefarious purposes. How can the CA let everybody in the world know to not trust that certificate without losing their trust in itself? Read more…
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In the first part of What is an SSL Certificate, we began by briefly discussing symmetric key encryption before moving into public-private key encryption. We continue that discussion here.
Public-private key encryption requires much more CPU power than symmetric key encryption because the keys tend to be much larger. For example, a private key (and its corresponding public key) may be 512, 1024, or 2048 bits. But symmetric keys tend to be much smaller, something like 40 bits. So it is common for computers to actually use symmetric key encryption for communication, but use PKI to exchange keys. Read more…
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An SSL certificate is an essential component of SSL. So first we need to learn what SSL is. This is a very deep topic, so bear with me as I provide some needed background information.
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It was created by Netscape Communications as a way for two computers to communicate securely with one another. It is used for many applications such as web browsing, email, etc. Read more…
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