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Growing a Tree Of Trust -- Part Two
By Mark Merkow, CCP, CISSP
January 14, 1999

Using A Digital Certificate

When you visit a Web site that requires a digital certificate for authentication, a message is sent to your browser to open the certificate store and ask for permission to send the appropriate certificate. An example of this form is shown in Figure 7 below.

Figure 7
Certificate Selection Form

Success!

With receipt of the certificate and traversal of the certificate chain, the requesting Web site will return a message indicating the outcome. An example of this message appears in Figure 9 below. In practical terms, the Web application will normally return a form that enables the user to select the functions that the certificate authorizes them. For example, if the digital certificate was used in single-sign on application, the resultant Web page will list the systems that the user is authorized to access. This single step may remove the requirement that the user enter an ID and password for every application they access.

Figure 8
Results From Secure Server

In the Valicert demonstration, the last step after successful access is the revocation of the certificate to prove that revoked certificates cannot be used for access.

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