Cryptography Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v5.42, by Herong Yang
Viewing Certificate Details
This section provides a tutorial example on how to view certificate details when visiting an 'https' Web site in IE.
When you visit a "https" Web server, it will send its certificate to your browser. Server's certificate is needed by the browser for these 2 tasks:
- Your browser must validate the certificate to determine that the Web site can be trusted or not before doing any further communications.
- Your browser must use the public key in the certificate to help secure the communication messages sent and received.
Normally, your browser will do these 2 tasks automatically without your interaction. You don't need to know where is the server certificate and what's in the certificate.
But since I am interested to learn more about "https" communication, I want to see the server certificate. Here is what did on IE to see details of the server certificate.
1. Run IE and go to https://login.yahoo.com and wait for the log in page to be loaded.
2. Click the lock icon at the end of the Web address field. A small pop up windows shows up.
3. Click the "View certificates" link on the pop up window. The Certificate dialog box shows up. The General tab tells me this information:
This certificate is intended for the following purpose(s): - Ensures the identify of a remote computer Issued to: *.login.yahoo.com Issued by: DigiCert SHA2 High Assurance Server CA Valid from 8/18/2019 to 2/15/2020
4. If you click the Details tab, you will details of this certificate:
This certificate has been verified for the following uses: SSL Client Certificate SSL Server Certificate Issued to Common Name (CN) *.login.yahoo.com Organization (O) Oath Inc. ... Issued by Common Name (CN) DigiCert SHA2 High Assurance Server CA Organization (O) DigiCert Inc ... Validity Issued On Sunday, August 18, 2019 Expires On Saturday, February 15, 2020 Fingerprints SHA-256 Fingerprint 57:61:... SHA1 Fingerprint 39:8C...
Cool. Now I see details of a real certificate for commercial uses.
Table of Contents
Introduction to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
DES Algorithm - Illustrated with Java Programs
DES Algorithm Java Implementation
DES Algorithm - Java Implementation in JDK JCE
DES Encryption Operation Modes
PHP Implementation of DES - mcrypt
Blowfish - 8-Byte Block Cipher
Secret Key Generation and Management
Cipher - Secret Key Encryption and Decryption
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
OpenSSL Introduction and Installation
OpenSSL Generating and Managing RSA Keys
OpenSSL Generating and Signing CSR
OpenSSL Validating Certificate Path
"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"
Visiting a "https" Web Site with IE
Installing Certificate Permanently in IE
Managing Certificates in Certificate Stores with IE
Exporting Certificates Out of IE
OpenSSL Viewing Certificates Exported from IE
Importing CA Certificate into IE
Importing Certificate Path into IE