From the course: CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) Cert Prep: 1 General Security Concepts

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 23,200 courses taught by industry experts.

Trust models

Trust models

From the course: CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) Cert Prep: 1 General Security Concepts

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Trust models

“

Any cryptographic system depends upon some degree of trust. Earlier in this course, I discussed how strong cryptography depends upon a secure key exchange process. The two people communicating must be confident that they are really communicating with each other and not an impersonator, and that nobody is able to eavesdrop on the communication where they exchange encryption keys. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol helps us with preventing eavesdropping, but we still need some way to ensure that we're not communicating with an imposter. In asymmetric cryptography, every user possesses a personal secret key that they don't share with anyone else. They can share their public keys freely, so there's no risk of eavesdropping. These two factors combine to eliminate the need for eavesdropping protection during key exchange. However, we still need to worry about imposters. How do we know that the person sending us their public key really is who they claim to be? While there are three…

Contents