Scoots
International Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2004
- Messages
- 27
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
https://secure.sylikc.net:243/self_signed/#sscc
"Certificates are basically a neatly packaged password-protected file that contains a public key and a private key. The encryption algorithm allows someone to encrypt text using the public key portion that can only be decrypted by the matching private key pair. When you want to do secured communication with this particular certificate, the program shares your public key to the other party. The application on that side encrypts the information with that public key and you decrypt it with your private key. This concept is known as "Public Key Cryptography" (just search Google for more technical details if you're interested). Now, imagine this, everyone in the whole wide world has the same public/private keypair as you do (as with AIM Encrypt). How secure is that? It gives you a false sense of security, which is the worse than no security at all. All the encrypted data that you can decrypt with AIM Encrypt's certificate, anyone else in the world (including your boss who may be monitoring your chats) can decrypt it using the same certificate freely available. Hence, I decided to find a way to create my own self-signed certificate." - sylikc.net
Useful if you are paranoid about your AIM conversations, or just don't want to deal with Verisign to create a certificate.
"Certificates are basically a neatly packaged password-protected file that contains a public key and a private key. The encryption algorithm allows someone to encrypt text using the public key portion that can only be decrypted by the matching private key pair. When you want to do secured communication with this particular certificate, the program shares your public key to the other party. The application on that side encrypts the information with that public key and you decrypt it with your private key. This concept is known as "Public Key Cryptography" (just search Google for more technical details if you're interested). Now, imagine this, everyone in the whole wide world has the same public/private keypair as you do (as with AIM Encrypt). How secure is that? It gives you a false sense of security, which is the worse than no security at all. All the encrypted data that you can decrypt with AIM Encrypt's certificate, anyone else in the world (including your boss who may be monitoring your chats) can decrypt it using the same certificate freely available. Hence, I decided to find a way to create my own self-signed certificate." - sylikc.net
Useful if you are paranoid about your AIM conversations, or just don't want to deal with Verisign to create a certificate.
