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- 0, In this animation, you will learn how digital
- 5, certificates are used to authenticate a user. A digital
- 9, certificate contains information about the
- 12, certificate owner, such as name, e-mail address, and
- 15, other identifying information. The certificate also
- 20, includes the public key from the public key pair,
- 23, which is generated by the owner, and the signature
- 26, of the issuing Certificate Authority. To enable
- 31, client authentication, both the client and Web
- 34, server must have digital certificates. To obtain a
- 38, digital certificate, the user makes a request to a
- 41, Certificate Authority. The Certificate Authority
- 44, verifies the identity of the requestor and notifies
- 48, the requestor when the certificate is available.
- 53, Finally, the requestor downloads the digital
- 56, certificate and it is installed into the browser. Part of
- 61, the request process involves creating the public
- 63, key pair. The private key is kept secure, and the
- 67, corresponding public key becomes part of the digital
- 70, certificate. A Web server administrator goes
- 74, through the same process as a user to request a
- 78, digital certificate for the server. Once the client and
- 81, server have digital certificates installed and IIS
- 85, has been properly configured, these certificates
- 88, can be used to authenticate the identity of the
- 91, user or Web server. To start the client
- 96, authentication process, the user accesses a Web site by using
- 101, HTTPS rather than HTTP. Using HTTPS causes the
- 108, client and server to be authenticated and data to be
- 111, encrypted during transmission. The client
- 115, authentication process is as follows. The client and Web
- 119, server exchange messages, and agree on a hashing
- 124, algorithm that will be used to build a message
- 126, digest. Building a message digest is the first step in
- 131, creating a digital signature. The client and server
- 135, exchange digital certificates. The client and
- 139, server communicate securely and agree on a set of
- 142, random bits that will be used for authentication. The
- 148, client creates a message digest by applying the
- 151, agreed upon hashing algorithm against the random
- 154, bits. The message digest is then encrypted with the
- 158, private key of the client and is sent to the
- 161, server. The encrypted message digest is the client's
- 165, digital signature for the random bits. The server
- 170, decrypts the message digest by using the public key
- 174, from the client's digital certificate. The server
- 177, then creates its own message digest by applying
- 180, the agreed upon hashing algorithm against its copy
- 183, of the random bits. The server compares the
- 187, decrypted message digest from the client with the newly
- 191, created message digest. If they are equal, the
- 195, server is guaranteed that the user who requested the
- 199, secure page can be identified by the digital
- 202, certificate that was sent. The user is authenticated and
- 207, the requested page is encrypted and returned to
- 209, the client.
- 212, END