- [Instructor] In this segment,
we're gonna take a closer look at digital certificates.
Now first we're going to look
at certificates that are stored locally on our machines,
specifically certificates related to
trusted certification authorities.
And then we'll look at a certificate in a browser.
We're gonna use Cert Manager
on my local Windows machine
to look at the certificates that are stored locally.
Now, on the left-hand side,
you can see folders with various certificates,
Personal, Trusted Route Certification Authorities,
Enterprise Trust, all the way down
to Smart Card Trusted Routes.
These are going to be certificates
that came pre-installed with my browser.
Now let's look at Trusted Route Certification Authorities.
So I'm gonna open that up and go to certificates.
And there we can see a whole set of certificates.
Now this is really interesting to look through
because they all have different intended purposes.
As I scroll through I can see some
are for client authentication,
some are from Timestamping,
some are for code signing.
Some can do everything.
And we can see who it was issued to,
who it was issued by,
their expiration date and that intended purpose,
and the friendly name.
And we can actually take a look at the certificates.
I'm gonna look at a DigiCert
Assured Root ID certificate authority.
And this will tell me the certificate
is intended for the following purposes,
to prove your identity to a remote computer.
To ensure software came from a software publisher,
to protect software from alteration after publication,
to protect email messages,
to ensure the identity of a remote computer,
and allows data to be signed with the current time.
So these are all the possible uses for the certificate.
I can see who it was issued to and issued by.
I can see the validity dates.
And then if I go into details,
I can see that we are an X.509 version three.
The serial number, I can see the signature algorithm.
So sha1RSA.
The signature hash algorithm, sha1.
If I scroll down,
I can see the public key.
The public key is an RSA key, a 2048 bit.
And what you're seeing down in the lower part
is actually a representation of the key.
I can get information about key usage.
Again, we're using it for digital certificate,
certificate signing, offline CRL signing, and CRL signing.
I can see a hash
and that it's an extended validation.
So I can go right here
and see all of the properties of the certificate.
Now I'm just gonna sort
by expiration date because remember we said that
certificates have an expiration date
or they could be revoked and no longer useful.
So we could see that in their expiration date.
And I'm just gonna go choose any one of them.
And you can see that says the certificate has expired
or is not yet valid.
So letting me know, right?
In this case, we're past 2020,
the certificate is not valid anymore.
Again, another one,
the certificate's expired or not yet valid.
So if you wanna look at what certificates
are on your system, you can go right
to your cert manager in the Windows environment
and take a look at those certificates.
Now let's look at certificates being used on the browser.
So here I am at Amazon site,
and I'd like to see their certificate.
So what am I gonna do?
I'm gonna come up to the padlock in the URL bar.
And I have a couple of options here.
Connection is secure,
cookies and site data or site settings.
I'm gonna go to connection is secure.
It tells me that the connection is secured, that's good.
And that the certificate is valid.
Okay, so now I'd like to look at the certificate.
I can see general information.
It's Amazon.com.
It was issued by DigiCert.
That was a certificate authority that we looked
at in our cert manager,
the one that was a trusted certificate authority.
We can see it was issued on January 16th, 2023.
And it's good through January 16th, 2024.
We can see with their SHA-256 fingerprint or hashes
as well as a SHA-1 fingerprint.
If I want additional details,
I can come here and I can see it's a version three,
the serial number, again, their certificate,
the signing algorithm when it's valid,
not before and not after.
Then I can see the public key using RSA.
I can see the public key.
Remember we said that public keys are freely distributed.
Again, the certificate key usage,
the extended key usage,
of CRL distribution point, any policies.
And I can go right to DigiCert
on the particular policies
as well as, again the fingerprints.
The SHA-256 and the SHA-1 fingerprint.
So ever have a question about a certificate?
Go right to the padlock and take a look at it.
Wanna know about the certificates that are on your system?
Again, go to your cert manager
if you're in the Windows environment and take a look.
And it's a really great way to get to know certificates
by just spending a little bit of time exploring them,
both the ones that are stored locally
and the ones that will be presented
to you whenever you're at a secure site.
And that my friends is a closer look.