Private-Public Certificates; Certification Authorities - ZyXEL Communications 802.11 a/g User Manual

Chapter 18 Certificates

18.6.1 Private-Public Certificates

When using public-key cryptology for authentication, each host has two keys. One
key is public and can be made openly available. The other key is private and must
be kept secure.
These keys work like a handwritten signature (in fact, certificates are often
referred to as "digital signatures"). Only you can write your signature exactly as it
should look. When people know what your signature looks like, they can verify
whether something was signed by you, or by someone else. In the same way, your
private key "writes" your digital signature and your public key allows people to
verify whether data was signed by you, or by someone else. This process works as
follows.
Tim wants to send a message to Jenny. He needs her to be sure that it comes from
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him, and that the message content has not been altered by anyone else along the
way. Tim generates a public key pair (one public key and one private key).
Tim keeps the private key and makes the public key openly available. This means
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that anyone who receives a message seeming to come from Tim can read it and
verify whether it is really from him or not.
Tim uses his private key to sign the message and sends it to Jenny.
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Jenny receives the message and uses Tim's public key to verify it. Jenny knows
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that the message is from Tim, and that although other people may have been able
to read the message, no-one can have altered it (because they cannot re-sign the
message with Tim's private key).
Additionally, Jenny uses her own private key to sign a message and Tim uses
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Jenny's public key to verify the message.

18.6.2 Certification Authorities

A Certification Authority (CA) issues certificates and guarantees the identity of
each certificate owner. There are commercial certification authorities like
CyberTrust or VeriSign and government certification authorities. You can use the
NWA to generate certification requests that contain identifying information and
public keys and then send the certification requests to a certification authority.
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NWA-3500/NWA-3550 User's Guide