<oXygen/> XML Editor User Guide

Certificates

A certificate is a digitally signed statement from the issuer (an individual, an organization, a website or a firm), saying that the public key (and some other information) of some other entity has a particular value. When data is digitally signed, the signature can be verified to check the data integrity and authenticity. Integrity means that the data has not been modified. Authenticity means the data comes indeed from the entity that claims to have created and signed it. Certificates are kept in special repositories called Keystores.

A Keystore is an encrypted file that contains private keys and certificates. All keystore entries (key and trusted certificate entries) are accessed via unique aliases. An alias must be assigned for every new entry of either a key or certificate as a reference for that entity. No Keystore can store an entity if it's "alias" already exists in that Keystore and no KeyStore can store trusted certificates generated with keys in it's KeyStore.

In <oXygen/> there are provided two types of Keystores: Java KeyStore (JKS) and Public-Key Cryptography Standards version 12 (PKCS-12). A keystore file is protected by a password.

To set the options for a certificate or to vadidate it, go to Options->Preferences->Certificates.