Concept
Certificate authority
An organisation trusted to vouch for a website's identity by signing its certificate.
Browsers and operating systems ship with a list of trusted certificate authorities (CAs). When a CA signs a site's certificate, every device that trusts the CA accepts that the key belongs to that domain. That is why a CA that leaks its private key or issues certificates carelessly is serious: anyone holding a bad certificate can impersonate sites. Browsers respond by removing ("distrusting") the CA.
Certificate authority in the news
Recent stories that mention it.
Related
- ProtocolTLS · Transport Layer SecurityThe encryption protocol behind HTTPS: it keeps traffic between two programs private and proves who the server is.
- ConceptPKI · Public key infrastructureThe system of keys, certificates and authorities that lets strangers on a network trust each other's identity.
- ProtocolHTTPSHTTP, the language of the web, sent inside a TLS-encrypted connection.
Plain-language explainers written by SecurityTabs, matched to stories by name. All terms