X.509 certificate

In cryptography, X.509 is a standard that defines the format of public key certificates. X.509 certificates are used in many Internet protocols, including TLS/SSL, which is the basis for HTTPS, the secure protocol for browsing the web. They're also used in offline applications, like electronic signatures. An X.509 certificate contains a public key and an identity (a hostname, or an organization, or an individual), and is either signed by a certificate authority or self-signed. When a certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority, or validated by other means, someone holding that certificate can rely on the public key it contains to establish secure communications with another party, or validate documents digitally signed by the corresponding private key.

Besides the format for certificates themselves, X.509 specifies certificate revocation lists as a means to distribute information about certificates that are no longer valid, and a certification path validation algorithm, which allows for certificates to be signed by intermediate CA certificates, which are in turn signed by other certificates, eventually reaching a trust anchor.

X.509 is defined by the International Telecommunications Union's Standardization sector (ITU-T), and is based on ASN.1, another ITU-T standard.

X.509 was initially issued on July 3, 1988 and was begun in association with the X.500 standard. It assumes a strict hierarchical system of certificate authorities (CAs) for issuing the certificates. This contrasts with web of trust models, like PGP, where anyone (not just special CAs) may sign and thus attest to the validity of others' key certificates. Version 3 of X.509 includes the flexibility to support other topologies like bridges and meshes. It can be used in a peer-to-peer, OpenPGP-like web of trust, but was rarely used that way as of 2004. The X.500 system has only been implemented by sovereign nations for state identity information sharing treaty fulfillment purposes, and the IETF's Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509), or PKIX, working group has adapted the standard to the more flexible organization of the Internet. In fact, the term X.509 certificate usually refers to the IETF's PKIX certificate and CRL Profile of the X.509 v3 certificate standard, as specified in RFC 5280, commonly called PKIX for Public Key Infrastructure (X.509).

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