I am trying to understand how SSL certificate and signing and the chain of trust works.
I know about root CAs
and that they are used to sign intermediate CAs
that sign the end certificates that are issued to a website. I also understand how the chain of trust works and that because a ceritifcate signed for X.com
is signed by the intermediate certificate that issued it which is signed by the root CA, I can be assured that I am connecting to X.com
.
My question is, how long does this chain extend? Can't I use X.com
to sign a certificate for another domain, say Y.com
. If no, why not? If yes, I don't see the purpose of signing.
Sorry if question is too basic but I did Google a lot before asking here.