XML Digital Signature articles, The solution to these problems is the use of one or more trusted third parties to associate an identified signer with a specific public key.

That trusted third party is referred to as a XML Digital Signature articles and "certification authority" in most technical standards and in these Guidelines. To associate a key pair with a prospective signer, a certification authority issues a certificate, an electronic record which lists or XML Digital Signature articles a public key as the "subject" of the certificate, and confirms that the prospective signer identified in the certificate holds the corresponding private key. The prospective signer is termed the "subscriber. A certificate's principal function is to bind a key pair with a particular subscriber. A "recipient" of the certificate desiring to rely upon a digital signature created by the subscriber named in the certificate (whereupon the recipient becomes a "relying party") can use the public key listed in the certificate to verify that the digital signature was created with the corresponding private key - XML Digital Signature articles. If such verification is successful, this chain of reasoning provides assurance that the corresponding private key is held by the subscriber named in the certificate, and that the digital signature and XML Digital Signature articles was created by that particular subscriber.

XML Digital Signature articles, To assure both message and identity authenticity of the certificate, the certification authority digitally signs it.

The issuing XML Digital Signature articles on the certificate can be verified by using the public key of the certification authority listed in another certificate by another certificate authority (which may but need not be on a higher level in a hierarchy), and that other certificate can in turn be authenticated by the public key listed in yet another certificate, and so on, until the person relying on the digital signature is adequately assured of its genuineness. In each case, the issuing certification authority must digitally sign its own certificate during the operational period of the other certificate used to verify the XML Digital Signature articles.

Relevant Article