In cryptography, a public key certificate (or identity certificate) is an electronic document which uses a digital signature to bind together a public key with an identity — information such as the name of a person or an organization, their address, and so forth. The certificate can be used to verify that a public key belongs to an individual.
In a typical public key infrastructure (PKI) scheme, the signature will be of a certificate authority (CA). In a web of trust scheme, the signature is of either the user (a self-signed certificate) or other users ("endorsements"). In either case, the signatures on a certificate are attestations by the certificate signer that the identity information and the public key belong together.
Quick n' dirty self signing guide
As you might have noticed there hasn't been very much activity on gsmblog lately. This is due to the fact that I have been busy getting the new version of gsmstuff.net running, and also been traveling a bit lately. But updates should be more regular from now on.
Anyhow, I wanted to try out the early bird version of mShell for 3rd edition, and realized that I would have to sign the application myself to be able to install it. I realized that I actually never had done that before, and when trying to do it I realized it would be easier with a tutorial. Unfortunately all of the guides out there seemed to be rather lousy. Most of them step by step guides, with millions of pictures that just made things harder to understand. So I decided to make my own quick and dirty guide, for those of us who have used a computer before, and don't need a picture-by-picture tutorial. So here goes.Read more »

