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What is client certificate key?
In cryptography, a client certificate is a type of digital certificate that is used by client systems to make authenticated requests to a remote server. Client certificates play a key role in many mutual authentication designs, providing strong assurances of a requester’s identity.
What is the difference between keys and certificates?
Public-key cryptography is based on the concept of a key pair, which consists of a public key and a private key. The owner of the key pair makes the public key available to anyone, but keeps the private key secret. A certificate verifies that an entity is the owner of a particular public key.
Do you need a private key for a client certificate?
On the Client the Client Certificates must have a Private Key. If absent, then the certificate is ignored. If the server doesn’t provide the list of Distinguished CA Names in the SERVER HELLO, then the client will present the user with all the client certificates that it has access to.
How does the server prove that the client owns the certificate?
The client provides not only his certificate but a digital signature over the certificate (and some other stuff) signed by his private key. The server verifies that with the public key. That proves that the client owns that certificate, but only if nobody else has, or has had, access to the private key.
How is a certificate sent to a client?
The client will then present the client certificate list to the user so that they can select a certificate to be sent to the Server. On the Client the Client Certificates must have a Private Key. If absent, then the certificate is ignored.
How does a public key work with a SSL certificate?
A public key is available to the public domain as it is a part of your SSL certificate and is made known to your server. The private key must correspond to the CSR it was generated with and, ultimately, it needs to match the certificate created from the CSR.