What Is a Certification Path?

This section describes what is a certificate path or certificate chain - An ordered list of certificates where the subject entity of one certificate is identical to the issuing entity of the next certificate.

Certification Path: Also called Certificate Chain. An ordered list of certificates where the subject entity of one certificate is identical to the issuing entity of the next certificate.

A certification path can also be defined as an ordered list of certificates where the issuing entity of one certificate can be identified as the subject entity of the previous certificate. But the first certificate has to be a special one, because there is no previous certificate to identify the issuing entity. The first certificate must be a self-signed certificate, where the issuing entity is the same as the subject entity.

For example, the following diagram shows you a certification path:

Certificate 1
   Issuer: Herong Yang
   Subject: Herong Yang

Certificate 2
   Issuer: Herong Yang
   Subject: John Smith

Certificate 3
   Issuer: John Smith
   Subject: Bill White

Certificate 4
   Issuer: Bill White
   Subject: Tom Bush

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Cryptography Terminology

 Cryptography Basic Concepts

 Introduction to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

 Introduction to DES Algorithm

 DES Algorithm - Illustrated with Java Programs

 DES Algorithm Java Implementation

 DES Algorithm - Java Implementation in JDK JCE

 DES Encryption Operation Modes

 DES in Stream Cipher Modes

 PHP Implementation of DES - mcrypt

 Blowfish - 8-Byte Block Cipher

 Secret Key Generation and Management

 Cipher - Secret Key Encryption and Decryption

 Introduction of RSA Algorithm

 RSA Implementation using java.math.BigInteger Class

 Introduction of DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)

 Java Default Implementation of DSA

 Private key and Public Key Pair Generation

 PKCS#8/X.509 Private/Public Encoding Standards

 Cipher - Public Key Encryption and Decryption

 MD5 Mesasge Digest Algorithm

 SHA1 Mesasge Digest Algorithm

 OpenSSL Introduction and Installation

 OpenSSL Generating and Managing RSA Keys

 OpenSSL Managing Certificates

 OpenSSL Generating and Signing CSR

OpenSSL Validating Certificate Path

What Is a Certification Path?

 Certification Path Validation Rules

 Creating a Certificate Path with OpenSSL

 Validating a Certificate Path with OpenSSL

 "keytool" and "keystore" from JDK

 "OpenSSL" Signing CSR Generated by "keytool"

 Migrating Keys from "keystore" to "OpenSSL" Key Files

 Certificate X.509 Standard and DER/PEM Formats

 Migrating Keys from "OpenSSL" Key Files to "keystore"

 Using Certificates in IE

 Using Certificates in Google Chrome

 Using Certificates in Firefox

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB