X.509 Certificates (RFC 5280)
Official docs outline
11 sections- Overview and certification path
Certificates, CAs, trust anchors and path building.
- Basic certificate fields
Version, serialNumber, issuer, validity, subject and SubjectPublicKeyInfo.
- Validity
notBefore and notAfter semantics.
- Certificate extensions
Critical and non-critical extensions.
- Key usage
keyCertSign, digitalSignature, keyEncipherment and others.
- Subject alternative name
DNS names, IPs and emails identifying the subject.
- Basic constraints
CA flag and path length constraints.
- Certificate revocation lists
CRL profile and extensions.
- Certification path validation
Basic path validation algorithm.
- Online Certificate Status Protocol
OCSP request and response.
- Service identity verification
Matching reference identifiers against certificate names.
Each section links to the official page. Titles and summaries by Extra Credit; the docs belong to their authors.