ITPEC FE Morning April 2018 Question 40
ITPEC FE Morning April 2018 — Question 40 of 80
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) — the role of a Certificate Authority in e-commerce
The correct answer is b): A Certificate Authority (CA) issues digital certificates for the public keys of the parties involved in the transaction.
A CA is a trusted third party in PKI. Its core function is to verify the identity of entities and bind their identity to their public key by issuing a digitally signed certificate. This allows other parties to trust that a given public key truly belongs to the claimed owner.
Why not the others:
- a) A CA does not encode/encrypt plain text — encryption is performed by the communicating parties themselves using the public/private keys.
- c) A CA does not manage passwords — password management is unrelated to PKI and certificate-based authentication.
- d) A private key is never shared between parties — the entire point of asymmetric cryptography is that private keys remain secret with their owner.
Key rule: CA = issues certificates that bind identity to public key. It does NOT encrypt data, manage passwords, or handle private keys of other parties.
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