What is an implicit certificate?

As with conventional or “explicit” certificates, implicit certificates are made up of three parts: identification data, a public key and a digital signature which binds the public key to the user’s ID data and verifies that this binding is accepted by an authority (or trusted-third-party).

Within a conventional certificate, the public key and digital signature are distinct data elements. In contrast, the public key and digital signature are ‘super imposed’ in implicit certificates and allow the recipient to extract and verify the public key of the other party from the signature portion. This substantially reduces the bandwidth required as there is no need to transmit both the certificate and the verification key.

http://www.certicom.com/index.php/explaining-implicit-certificate

Implicit certificates

Labels: security, embedded