Certificate Authorities

GridSite relies on users and hosts having X.509 certificates for mutual authentication. Most grid research projects are now associated with a Certification Authority (CA) which will issue certificates to members. For people outside the research world, commerical X.509 certification authorities designed for commercial Web sites can also be used.

This page lists pointers to academic and commercial CAs.

UK e-Science Certification Authority

Provides X.509 certificates for the UK e-Science community.

EDG lists of CAs

A couple of dozen CAs associated with European and North American grid research projects.

CrossGrid CA list

Another 10 European grid research CAs.

Globus Certificate Service

Low quality certificates with no name in the certificate subject (just a unique number.) You can generate a certificate request using Globus (or with an OpenSSL command like openssl req -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout key.pem -out req.pem -config /usr/share/ssl/openssl.cnf) and then upload it to their CA website to get it signed.

CAcert

A free, community-based Certification Authority, using volunteer registration authorities.

Open Directory Project's list of Third Party Certification Services

Commerical services like Thawte that sell certificates to commercial HTTPS websites, and will sell or give user or email certificates to individuals.

If you know of a Certification Authority that doesn't appear on the lists above, please mail me at [email protected].