SSL Certificates

Hello,

The post is mentioned for general working of SSL certificates, how the requests are being processed between the server and client.

I. Obtaining an SSL Certificate:

XYZ Inc., intends to secure their customer checkout process, account management, and internal employee correspondence on their website, xyz.com.

Step 1: XYZ creates a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and during this process, a private key is generated.

Step 2: XYZ goes to a trusted, third party Certificate Authority, such as Trustwave . Trustwave takes the certificate signing request and validates XYZ in a two step process. Trustwave validates that XYZ has control of the domain xyz.com and that XYZ Inc. is an official organization listed in public government records.

Step 3: When the validation process is complete, Trustwave gives XYZ a new public key (certificate) encrypted with Trustwave's private key.

Step 4: XYZ installs the certificate on their webserver(s).

II. How Customers Communicate with the Server using SSL

Step 1: A customer makes a connection to xyz.com on an SSL port, typically 443. This connection is denoted with https instead of http.

Step 2: xyz.com sends back its public key to the customer. Once customer receives it, his/her browser decides if it is alright to proceed.

• The xyz.com public key must NOT be expired
• The xyz.com public key must be for xyz.com only
• The client must have the public key for Trustwave installed in their browser certificate store. 99.9% of all modern browsers (1998+) include the Trustwave root certificate. If the customer has Trustwave trusted public key, then they can trust that they are really communicating with XYZ, Inc.

Step 3: If the customer decides to trust the certificate, then the customer will be sent to xyz.com his/her public key.

Step 4: xyz.com will next create a unique hash and encrypt it using both the customer's public key and xyz.com's private key, and send this back to the client.

Step 5: Customer's browser will decrypt the hash. This process shows that the xyz.com sent the hash and only the customer is able to read it.

Step 6: Customer and website can now securely exchange information.

Refer https://www.thesslstore.com/ and https://www.rapidsslonline.com/index.aspx

Thanks and Regards,

Gaurav Singh