Chapter 14 Certificates
NWA1000 Series User’s Guide
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• Binary PKCS#12: This is a format for transferring public key and private key certificates.The private key
in a PKCS #12 file is within a password-encrypted envelope. The file’s password is not connected to
your certificate’s public or private passwords. Exporting a PKCS #12 file creates this and you must
provide it to decrypt the contents when you import the file into the NWA1000 Series.
Note: Be careful not to convert a binary file to text during the transfer process. It is easy for this
to occur since many programs use text files by default.
14.1.3 Verifying a Certificate
Before you import a trusted certificate into the NWA1000 Series, you should verify that you have the
correct certificate. You can do this using the certificate’s fingerprint. A certificate’s fingerprint is a
message digest calculated using the MD5 or SHA1 algorithm. The following procedure describes how to
check a certificate’s fingerprint to verify that you have the actual certificate.
1
Browse to where you have the certificate saved on your computer.
2
Make sure that the certificate has a “.cer” or “.crt” file name extension.
3
Double-click the certificate’s icon to open the
Certificate
window. Click the
Details
tab and scroll down
to the
Thumbprint Algorithm
and
Thumbprint
fields.
4
Use a secure method to verify that the certificate owner has the same information in the
Thumbprint
Algorithm
and
Thumbprint
fields. The secure method may vary based on your situation. Possible
examples would be over the telephone or through an HTTPS connection.