Server Certificate Model

In this post we will discus a little about server certificate model. Yes you are right we will discus here something about CA certificates and SSL. So lets start from CA certificate. Full form of CA is certificate authority or certification authority its main task is to provide digital signatures which are known as CA certificates. The digital signatures/certificates certifies the ownership of a public key. There are several CA that provide digital certificates some are free while some are paid. The very common use of CA certificates can be found in SSL or TSL. The introduction of SSL in HTTP protocol has made possible data transfer via network in encrypted form. Due to introduction of SSL in HTTP the three way handshake is also slightly affected to support data transfer in encrypted form.



A digital certificate can be compared to a voter card id. A voter can be termed as a website, card issuing office as CA authorities and voter card number as secret cipher code. Cipher code for SSL is determined with help of cipher suite which is set of cryptographic primitives and configurations. It may include information about which key exchange algorithm to use, authentication algorithm, encryption, hashing and other information. SSL works on the basis of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and uses randomly generated session key for first time session key exchange with any website. The key exchange cycle involves setting up special session key that both client and server can use to communicate securely.

Now one of the biggest problem with SSL is that it only certifies that the certificate is issued to particular website for particular reason without any mechanism to verify it. That means you can use digital certificate verified for some other website for yourself. For most of the Windows ISS servers, these digital certificates and does not even needs real validation, it means if you activate HTTPS over HTTP in Windows ISS server then your SSL layer would be ready without any third party verification because it'll itself act as CA authority root server.

By the way the motive of this post was not explaining full working of SSL but to clear some basics that you must know to further understand our upcoming posts on attacking SSL encryption. So in upcoming posts we will have our look on SSL weaknesses and how to attack them. Till then thanks for reading, have a nice time and keep visiting.

FACEBOOK UNVEILS VIDEO CALLING POWERED BY SKYPE

Facebook has unveiled a group chat tool, a new design for its overall chat interface, and, yes, a video calling service based on Skype.
"Video calling is the first example of what we think of as a great social app," Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a press event at the company's Palo Alto, California, headquarters. "The integration that we've done could not have been done without the great social infrastructure we've rolled out over the last five years," he said.
The group chat tool is based on Facebook's existing Groups setup, which is now used by about 50 per cent of all Facebookers, according to Zuckerberg. The new design includes a browser sidebar that provides quick access to those you chat with most, and it offers a "call" button that launches the video service.

The video service requires a plug-in, but you can place a call to your Facebook friends that will then send them a notice pointing them to the plug-in. The service does not offer group video calling, but Zuckerberg indicated that this will eventually be rolled into the service.

The service cannot be used to call existing off-Facebook Skype clients – or vice versa. But Skype product manager Mike Barnes said that the two companies will eventually provide such off-Facebook calling.


Facebook has already started to roll the new tools across its site, and "millions" of users. Bates says that the video service will reach about one per cent of users on Wednesday. According to Skype CEO Tony Bates, the two companies have been working on the video service for the past six months.

In late June, Zuckerberg told a Seattle audience that Facebook would unveil something "awesome" today, and last week, Techcrunch reported that this would involve integrating the social network with the Skype VoIP service, which is now owned by Microsoft. Redmond is a Facebook investor and longtime Facebook partner. Microsoft's Bing underpins search on Facebook, and Facebook may be used to personalized your results on Bing. Microsoft announced in May it's buying Skype for $8.5bn.