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Please explain the workflow of a Certificate Signing Request

Please explain the workflow of a Certificate Signing Request

How does this request originate? What does it consist of? What kind of signing authority responds to this request?

And how does it relate to SSL?

And what about the latest update to the.NET Framework? 4.7.2?

Thanks.
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gr8gonzo
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Also, speaking of .NET Framework, it's worth noting that while the public/private key pair concepts are all generally the same, Microsoft does have some different, preferred formats for storing certificates. A lot of people get confused about the different formats (PEM, DER, etc) and why .NET won't read a PEM-formatted certificate or key, but ultimately, it's all just a different format of the same data. If I have a .NET app and absolutely need to work with PEM or DER formats, I typically use the BouncyCastle library to add that support. Otherwise, if format isn't important, .NET has all of the tools built in.
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Thank you for that detailed explanation. By latest update to .NET Framework, I was referring to version 4.7.2 and what I read here:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-the-net-framework-4-7-2/

under the section...

BCL – Cryptographic Improvements
New overloads to RSA.Create and DSA.Create
Thank you.
Those aren't functional crypto changes. Those are just ways to make it easier to write code that uses RSA and DSA classes. Unless you're writing an application that does that kind of thing, there's no impact to you.

As far as passive, functional impact goes for "SSL" - the next major update will probably be the inclusion of TLS 1.3, which was approved back in August but still isn't in the .NET framework yet.