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certificatekeystorepublic-key

Why public certificates are stored in a keystore?

If certificates are public anyways, why are they stored in a password-protected keystore?

Is this a must, or a means to relate the public key to the private key?

Solution

  • There a few reasons for that:

    First, in terms of implementation it is indeed a means to relate a private key to a public key. If a private key if compromised, the whole certificate is compromised.

    Second, the knowledge of "who we trust" is valuable.

    Third, a random user shouldn't be able to add new certificates to the trust store.