February 5, 2002
Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography
29
Certificate Authorities
nA certificate authority (CA) guarantees the connection between a key and an “end entity.”
nAn end entity is:
nA person
nA role (“VP of sales”)
nAn organization
nA pseudonym
nA piece of hardware or software
nAn account
nSome CA’s only allow a subset of these types.