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3 months ago
2
It's easy, you can make a certificate for yourself! Of course self issued certificates will not be useful to most people. In the same way that you can make your own currency but others won't accept it, it's unlikely that anyone would accept your self issued certificate.
Self issued certificates are for entities that are already trustworthy, for instance, the government that issues currency which is accepted because people trust the government.
Another example of an entity that can issue itself a certificate would be your local police department. That self issued certificate can then be used to issue certificates to police officers and those police officers can use their certificates to issue cryptographic versions of your drivers license or state ID to you.
Any entity that can be considered independently trustworthy can create self issued certificates and use them to issue other certificates. This type of use of a self issued certificate is a delegation of trustworthiness. A police department that uses its self issued certifcate to issue certificates to individual officers is delegating trustworthiness to those officer's certificates.
An entity that can create a self issued certificate and use it to issue trustworthy certificates is called a trust anchor.
There are a lot of entities that can serve as trust anchors, these are mostly organizational entities but they may well be individuals. A lot of government agencies, educational institutions law/judiciary institutions could all serve as trust anchors.
Below are some examples of trust anchors.
check Police departments. check Government agencies, ex DMV, SSA, IRS. check A notary public. check A school, college, university check Any well known person with a website.
