security

Question 1

how do computers agree on how to encrypt?

Answer 1

client sends its encryption capabilities (e.g. RSA, Diffie-Hellman, DSA), cipher (e.g. RC4, Triple DES, AES), and hash (e.g. HMAC-MD5, HMAC-SHA), as well as TLS version, and random number to calculate keys. server responds with what it chooses.

Question 2

what follows encryption protocol agreement?

Answer 2

server sends its certificate

Question 3

when is symmetric key encryption done?

Answer 3

I think on the “start encrypting” stage, via calculating a master secret code

Question 4

what does SSL accomplish?

Answer 4

encryption and identification

Question 5

what’s in a CA certificate?

Answer 5

version
serial number
algorithm ID
issuer
validity dates
company details of subject
subject public key info (algorithm, key)
Identifier for issuer
identifier for company
signature algorithm
signature

Question 6

how does browser know that CA certificates are valid?

Answer 6

browser has list of certificate authorities with their certificates

Question 7

what is a trapdoor function?

Answer 7

a function that is easy to compute, but difficult to inverse without the trapdoor