Penguin

Differences between version 6 and predecessor to the previous major change of X509.

Other diffs: Previous Revision, Previous Author, or view the Annotated Edit History

Newer page: version 6 Last edited on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 7:59:59 pm by StuartYeates Revert
Older page: version 5 Last edited on Thursday, April 1, 2004 2:43:02 am by StuartYeates Revert
@@ -1,19 +1,19 @@
 X509 is a standard for defining a DigitalCertificate. It is the signing system used for [SSL]. The [X509] PublicKey security model is almost completely incompatible with the [OpenPGP] PublicKey security model, but they serve very different purposes. [X509] is heirarchical and commerce-oriented, whereas [PGP]/[GPG] is massively distributed, very fault tolerant and works using a WebOfTrust. 
  
 Some useful documentation on X509 certificates: http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/security/cert3.html. 
  
-Some information about how to implement [X509]  
-* http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/x509guide.txt  
- This is also just an interesting read to find out why X509 is such a bizarre standard 
+Some information about how to implement [X509]: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/x509guide.txt This is also just an interesting read to find out why X509 is such a bizarre standard 
  
 Things that use X509 certificates: 
  
 * Various code-signing schemes, such as signed Java ARchives, and Microsoft Authenticode (because these things are built upon [SSL]). 
-* Various secure E-Mail standards, such as PEM and S/MIME (S/MIME can also use [OpenPGP]). 
+* Various secure E-Mail standards, such as [ PEM] and [ S/MIME] (S/MIME can also use [OpenPGP]). 
 * E-Commerce protocols, such as SET. 
 * MicrosoftWindows 
  
-AddToMe ... 
+!!Why you won't find much [X509] information on the [InterNet]  
+  
+The [X509] standard was developed by the [ITU-T] which changes money for version of the standard, rather than making them freely avaliable over the InterNet . This is not a problem if you work for a big telecommunications company which has the resources to get you a copy of the standard, but can be a significant barrier to entry for smaller players and OpenSource developers . This may be a reason for the lack of [X509] support in the open source world, expecially compared to things like [OpenPGP] and other freely avaliable standards
  
 ---- 
 CategoryStandards