CCIE or Null!

One of my favorite questions: ‘What format do you want that certificate in?

Which then forces me to think and try and remember what was so special and different about all the certificate formats again?

We’ll start with:

• PEM – Privacy Enhanced Mail
  • Certificate represented in text format. In a Hex/ASCII format BASE64 encoded
  • DER Encoded.
• Key – Private Key
  • This format is used for storing private keys.
  • Found in the .key extension.
• PKCS#7
  • Defined in RFC 2315
  • More than a single certificate can be bundled in this format.
  • Certificate chains can be included in this format.
  • Typically found with .p7b, or p7c extensions.
• PKCS#12
  • More than a single certificate can be bundled in this format.
  • With this format both the public and private key can be exported/combined.
    • A key difference between PKCS#12 & PKCS#7
  • Even certificate chains can be combined into a single file.
  • Typically found with .p12 or .pfx extensions

Just a quick run through of the a few certificate types.