Certificates and Certificate Chains

This section describes certificate and certificate chain. A certificate contains someone's public key signed by a trusted authority.

What is Certificate: A certificate is digitally signed statement from the issuer saying that the public key of the subject has some specific value.

The above definition is copied from the JDK documentation. It has a couple of important terms:

X.509 Certificate - A certificate written in X.509 standard format. X.509 standard was introduction in 1988. It requires a certificate to have the following information:

How can you get a certificate for your own public key?

What is Certificate Chain: A certificate chain is a series of certificates that one certificate signs the public key of the issuer of the next certificate. Usually the top certificate (the first certificate) is self-signed, where issuer signed its own public key.

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"keytool" Commands and "keystore" Files

Certificates and Certificate Chains

 What Is "keystore"?

 "keytool" - Key and Certificate Management Tool

 "keytool -genkeypair" - Generating Keys and Self-Signed Certificates

 "keystore" File Type: PKCS12 and JKS

 "keytool -export/import" - Exporting and Importing Certificates

 "keytool -keyclone" - Cloning Certificates with New Identities

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