On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:11:03PM -0500, Jon Schewe wrote:
> So anyone can just make up a certificate and do ssl, just as long as anyone
> going to the site trusts the unsigned certificate?
> 

No, you have to have a signed certificate, you just don't have to have a
cert signed by a certificate authority (e.g Verisign, Thawt, etc).

It's perfectly fine for people to use a self-signed cert.  The scary thing
is when people just click through without reading about the cert.  In fact,
that's one of the reasons that PKI gets such a bad rap: It doesn't keep
stupid people from hurting themselves.

Gabe

-- 
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Gabe Turner                                             gabe at msi.umn.edu
SGI Origin Systems Administrator,
University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute
 for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation         www.msi.umn.edu
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