Patent ID: 8078866

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a trust information object (TIO), said TIO comprising: a plurality of hash values, wherein the plurality of hash values represent hashes generated from a public key portion of a plurality of trust entity certificates, said TIO further comprising associated trust information of the plurality of trust entity certificates, said associated trust information indicating a level of trust for each of trusted entities associated with each of said plurality of trust entity certificates; during an SSL handshake with a server, receiving a certificate chain that comprises a plurality of unverified certificates from the server, wherein the plurality of unverified certificates includes a first unverified root certificate of a certificate authority issuing the plurality of unverified certificates; and hashing the first unverified root certificate to generate a digest; comparing the resulting digest against the plurality of hash values obtained from said TIO; when the resulting digest and a first corresponding trust bit of the first unverified root certificate are found in said TIO, thereby producing a first match: validating said certificate chain; and initiating a session with the server.