this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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what if the hacker provided the public key for https connection? (www.youtube.com)
submitted 3 months ago by Moxible@monyet.cc to c/technology@lemmy.world
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So this video explains how https works. What I don't get is what if a hacker in the middle pretended to be the server and provided me with the box and the public key. wouldn't he be able to decrypt the message with his private key? I'm not a tech expert, but just curious and trying to learn.

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[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

An additionap note on what a certificate is, to supplement everyone here who've desceibe howbthat's the missing piece:

A certificate's first main purpose is being the vehicle vy which the public key is distributed, but additionally it contains information ABOUT the owner. Then the whole thing is digitally signed with the private key (and also a trusted CA's private key), so that a receiver can validate the authenticity of the cert with the public key.

The "info" in the cert can theoretically be anything, but the most important one is the domain. Your browser knows that visiting google.com is secure because it checks the cert it gets from google.com to see if it states that it owns the google.com domain, and then we trust the root CAs around the world to make clients prove they own that domain, before issung a cert for it.