[Tfug] certificate signing

[Chris Hilton]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 15:12:40 -0700
"John E. Morrow" <morrow@morrow.homeip.net> wrote:

> A while back at a meeting I was asking about ssl certificate signing.
> Someone (Chris?) had mentioned a project for a public/free signing
> authority or something like that. Anyone know a url for some more
> info?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> John Morrow

You mean a public/free Certification Authority?  I think I mentioned
that you could just be your own.  See documentation at
http://www.openssl.org.  I have run across a couple of volunteer CA's in
the past but they quickly run out of steam and disappear.  The two I
still have links for are Valicert, which is now commercial and Arcanvs
(http://www.arcanvs.com) which isn't working right now so I can't check.

You sign your own certificates.  The Certification Authority is an
"impartial" third party that verifies the certificate's authentic and
hasn't been f****ed with.  I imagine your users know you and can trust
you aren't offering a bogus cert for your own site.  So you don't really
need a CA.

-C-