doc/Certificates.txt



Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
===============================

Hosts
-----
Host certificates can be either self-signed or signed by a CA. The
private key can be either embedded into the same file as the certificate 
or in a separate file.

The simplest form is a self-signed certificate with null-password 
embedded key.

Self-signed host certificates contain both certificate and key in same
file. The file is placed in /etc/ssl/certs/ named by the service it
provides appended ".pem".

CA signed host certificates , or symlinked with that name from
hostname.key or whatever makes best sense in the situation, either with
the key embedded or the key at the same place.

The script /usr/share/local/localmksslcerts can be used to make
self-signed certificates with embedded keys.

Certificate Authority
---------------------
CA Certificates are divided in a public certificate and a private key.

The CA certificate is placed in /etc/ssl/certs/ and named loosely by the
CN of the organisation using digits [a-zA-Z0-9_-], appended "_CA.pem".

Example: IT_guide_dr_Jones_CA.pem

CA Key is located in /etc/ssl/private/ equally named.

Certificate is symlinked to "/etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem" for easy
locating by scripts.

Read here about confusion between commercial CAs and actual security:
http://www.counterpane.com/pki-risks.html

Users
-----
Have a look at this web page:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/help/secure-access/ssl-mail-setup.shtml

The script is at /usr/share/local/mycert - adapted to Debian GNU/Linux.

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$Id: Certificates.txt,v 1.2 2002-12-28 02:03:20 jonas Exp $