Chapter 14 Certificates

•Key distribution is simple and very secure since you can freely distribute public keys and you never need to transmit private keys.

Self-signed Certificates

You can have the NWA3000-N series AP act as a certification authority and sign its own certificates.

Factory Default Certificate

The NWA3000-N series AP generates its own unique self-signed certificate when you first turn it on. This certificate is referred to in the GUI as the factory default certificate.

Certificate File Formats

Any certificate that you want to import has to be in one of these file formats:

•Binary X.509: This is an ITU-T recommendation that defines the formats for X.509 certificates.

•PEM (Base-64) encoded X.509: This Privacy Enhanced Mail format uses lowercase letters, uppercase letters and numerals to convert a binary X.509 certificate into a printable form.

•Binary PKCS#7: This is a standard that defines the general syntax for data (including digital signatures) that may be encrypted. A PKCS #7 file is used to transfer a public key certificate. The private key is not included. The NWA3000- N series AP currently allows the importation of a PKS#7 file that contains a single certificate.

•PEM (Base-64) encoded PKCS#7: This Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format uses lowercase letters, uppercase letters and numerals to convert a binary PKCS#7 certificate into a printable form.

•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 NWA3000-N series AP.

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 NWA3000-N series AP, 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

 

173

NWA3000-N Series User’s Guide