Intro

Digital certificates exist to improve on the weaknesses of digital signatures.

Bruh what’s the weakness

Lack of identification: Digital signatures themselves do not verify the identity of the sender and their public key.

To resolve the above we need a trusted third party.

Digital Certificate

A digital certificate is an electronic document used to identify an individual, a system, a server, a company, or some other entity, and to associate a public key with that entity. A digital certificate is issued by a trusted third party, also known as a certification authority, and is digitally signed by that authority.

Digital certificates are based on trust and verify that a signature is truly signed by the claimed signer. They are stored or sent alongside the public key to a digital signature.

A digital certificate will typically contain the following info:

1. Certificate owners name
2. Owners public key and its expiration date
3. Certificate issuers name
4. Certificate issuers’ digital signature & public key

…

Fun fact!

X.509 is the ubiquitous standard format of how to define a public certificate.

Below is a diagram illustrating how digital certificates work

BRIAN ADD A DIAGRAM

Follow up

Now that you know the basics of how digital signatures and certificates work you can read up on HTTPS & TLS / SSL the backbone of modern internet security. Where can you do this? In my next article of course!