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All certificates signed by the root certificate, with the "CA" field set to true, inherit the trustworthiness of the root certificate—a signature by a root certificate is somewhat analogous to "notarizing" identity in the physical world. Such a certificate is called an intermediate certificate or subordinate CA certificate.
The roles of root certificate, intermediate certificate and end-entity certificate as in the chain of trust. In computer security, a chain of trust is established by validating each component of hardware and software from the end entity up to the root certificate. It is intended to ensure that only trusted software and hardware can be used ...
In the X.509 system, there are two types of certificates. The first is a CA certificate. The second is an end-entity certificate. A CA certificate can issue other certificates. The top level, self-signed CA certificate is sometimes called the Root CA certificate. Other CA certificates are called intermediate CA or subordinate CA certificates.
CAs typically take the further precaution of keeping the key for their long-term root certificates in an HSM that is kept offline, except when it is needed to sign shorter-lived intermediate certificates. The intermediate certificates, stored in an online HSM, can do the day-to-day work of signing end-entity certificates and keeping revocation ...
The digital certificate chain of trust starts with a self-signed certificate, called a root certificate, trust anchor, or trust root. A certificate authority self-signs a root certificate to be able to sign other certificates. An intermediate certificate has a similar purpose to the root certificate – its only use is to sign other certificates.
Once the root CA is installed and its root certificate is created, the next action taken by the administrator of the root CA is to issue certificates authorizing intermediate (or subordinate) CAs. This creates the ability to issue, distribute and revoke digital certificates without the direct action of the root CA.
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The root certificate was used to sign two intermediate certificates, [44] which are also cross-signed by the certificate authority IdenTrust. [ 7 ] [ 45 ] One of the intermediate certificates is used to sign issued certificates, while the other is kept offline as a backup in case of problems with the first intermediate certificate. [ 44 ]