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trust anchor
The known-good root certificate that a chain of certificates must ultimately trace back to before you'll trust it.
Certificate verification works by following a chain: this cert was signed by that one, which was signed by another, and so on. A trust anchor is where the chain must end — a root you already decided to trust, usually built into your system or supplied by the caller. If a chain doesn't terminate at a trust anchor, it's rejected no matter how well-formed it is.
See also
- X.509The standard format for digital certificates that bind an identity to a public key.
- wildcard matchingLetting one certificate cover many hostnames by matching a pattern like *.example.com.
- zsecThe project's self-contained security core, built without relying on outside libraries.