path: root/lib/ssl/doc/src/pkix_certs.xml

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<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2003</year><year>2009</year>
      <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice>
      The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
      Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
      compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
      Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
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    </legalnotice>

    <title>PKIX Certificates</title>
    <prepared>UAB/F/P Peter H&ouml;gfeldt</prepared>
    <docno></docno>
    <date>2003-06-09</date>
    <rev>A</rev>
    <file>pkix_certs.xml</file>
  </header>

  <section>
    <title>Introduction to Certificates</title>
    <p>Certificates were originally defined by ITU (CCITT) and the latest 
      definitions are described in <cite id="X.509"></cite>, but those definitions
      are (as always) not working. 
    </p>
    <p>Working certificate definitions for the Internet Community are found
      in the the PKIX RFCs <cite id="rfc3279"></cite> and <cite id="rfc3280"></cite>. 
      The parsing of certificates in the Erlang/OTP SSL application is
      based on those RFCS. 
    </p>
    <p>Certificates are defined in terms of ASN.1 (<cite id="X.680"></cite>).
      For an introduction to ASN.1 see <url href="http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/">ASN.1 Information Site</url>.
    </p>    
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>PKIX Certificates</title>
    <p>Certificate handling is now handled by the <c>public_key</c> application.</p>
    <p>
      DER encoded certificates returned by <c>ssl:peercert/1</c> can for example 
      be decoded by the <c>public_key:pkix_decode_cert/2</c> function. 
    </p>
  </section>
</chapter>