P-662H/HW-D Series User’s Guide

17.12 Verifying a Trusted Remote Host’s Certificate

Certificates issued by certification authorities have the certification authority’s signature for you to check. Self-signed certificates only have the signature of the host itself. This means that you must be very careful when deciding to import (and thereby trust) a remote host’s self- signed certificate.

17.12.1 Trusted Remote Host Certificate Fingerprints

A certificate’s fingerprints are message digests calculated using the MD5 or SHA1 algorithms. The following procedure describes how to use a certificate’s fingerprint to verify that you have the remote host’s actual certificate.

1Browse to where you have the remote host’s certificate saved on your computer.

2Make sure that the certificate has a “.cer” or “.crt” file name extension.

Figure 149 Remote Host Certificates

3Double-click the certificate’s icon to open the Certificate window. Click the Details tab and scroll down to the Thumbprint Algorithm and Thumbprint fields.

Figure 150 Certificate Details

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Chapter 17 Certificates