PKI Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 2.04, by Dr. Herong Yang
Visiting "https" Web Site with Firefox 35
This section describes how Firefox 35 shows a lock icon when you visit an 'https' Web site to provide you more security related information.
As I mentioned earlier in the book, Web browsers play very important roles in using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to secure Web communications. Now let's see how Firefox 35, as the leading Web browser, supports HTTPS.
1. Run Firefox 35 and go to Yahoo home page, www.yahoo.com.
2. Click "Mail" in the Yahoo Sites menu.
3. After Firefox 35 finishing displaying the login page, look at the bottom right corner of the browser window. You will see lock icon displayed next to the address:
What happened here was:
- When the link "Mail" was clicked, Firefox was redirected to use this URL: https://login.yahoo.com/...
- Since this is HTTPS based URL, Firefox requested for the server, login.yahoo.com, to provide the server certificate.
- Firefox validated the server certificate and found no issue.
- Firefox created a one-time encryption key, encrypted with server's public key and delivered to the server.
- Server returned the login page document encrypted with the encryption key.
The lock icon at the right side of the address indicates that this page is secured with HTTPS. If you click the lock icon, Firefox will provide you more security related information for this page. See next sections for more tutorials.
Last update: 2015.
Table of Contents
Introduction of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
Introduction of HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)
Using HTTPS with IE (Internet Explorer) 10
►Visiting "https" Web Site with Firefox 35
Viewing Server Certificate in Firefox 35
Server Certificate General Information
Viewing Server Certificate Path in Firefox 35
Exporting Server Certificate to File in Firefox 35
Viewing Pre-Installed Certificates in Firefox 35
Listing of Trusted Root CA in Firefox 35
Exporting Certificate to File from Firefox 35
Deleting Root CA Certificates from Firefox 35
Firefox 35 Displaying Certificate Error Page
Adding Security Exception in Firefox 35
Failing to Import Root CA Certificates to Firefox 35
Certificate Trust Settings in Firefox 35
Perl Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers
PHP Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers
Java Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers
Certificate Stores and Certificate Console
.NET Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers
CAcert.org - Root CA Offering Free Certificates
PKI CA Administration - Issuing Certificates
Digital Signature - Microsoft Word 2007
Digital Signature - OpenOffice.org 3