Symbian
Symbian OS Library

SYMBIAN OS V9.3

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Certificates

A certificate binds a public key to a certain individual/entity. This is usually done using digital signatures: if a certificate bearing a public key and an individual's name is signed with a key pair which you already trust, then you can rest assure that the public key in the certificate really does belong to the individual named in the certificate.

Different standards using Public Key Cryptography employ different models for using certificates to establish trust. Such a model, encompassing data structures, rules for their use, and users of them, may be referred to as a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). SSL, TLS and S/MIME all use X.509 v.3 certificates, and a hierarchical PKI in which users are certified by Certification Authorities.

All data which appear in the interface between the Symbian OS and the rest of the world need a transport encoding, and it is in this form that they are sent and received. The transport encoding for X.509 data structures is DER encoded ASN.1.

Certification Authorities

Certification Authorities (CAs) are trusted third parties which perform the following functions in the PKIX public key infrastructure: