mediumConceptMidSeniorStaff
How does HTTPS establish trust, and what does a certificate prove?
5 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
A certificate binds a public key to a domain name and is signed by a chain ending at a root already in your device's trust store.It proves that whoever holds the matching private key controlled that name at issuance - nothing about the operator's honesty - and revoking it early barely works.
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