Trust anchor — in cryptographic systems with hierarchical structure is an authoritative entity for which trust is assumed and not derived.
In X.509 architecture, a root certificate would be the trust anchor from which whole chain of trust is derived. The trust anchor must be in possession of the trusting party beforehand to make any further certificate path validation possible.
In most operating systems, the trust anchor is a collection of X.509 certificates of certification authorities that come preinstalled with the operating system, or is built into an application (such as web browser).
Famous quotes containing the words trust and/or anchor:
“The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)
“It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)