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16 Security in Detail
XPort Pro™ User Guide 139
Certificates and private keys can be stored in several file formats. Best known are
PKCS12, DER and PEM. Certificate and key can be in the same file or in separate
files. The key can be encrypted with a password or not. The XPort Pro currently only
accepts separate PEM files. The key needs to be unencrypted.
Utilities
Several utilities exist to convert between the formats.
OpenSSL
OpenSSL is a widely used open source set of SSL related command line utilities. It
can act as server or client. It can generate or sign certificate requests. It can convert
from and to all kinds of formats.
Executables are available for Linux and Windows.
To generate a self-signed RSA certificate/key combo:
openssl req –x509 –nodes –days 365 –newkey rsa:1024 –keyout
mp_key.pem –out mp_cert.pem
See
www.openssl.org or www.madboa.com/geek/openssl for more information.
Note: Signing other certificate requests is also possible with OpenSSL but is too
complicated to explain here.
Steel Belted Radius
Steel Belted Radius is a commercial radius server by Juniper Networks that provides
a GUI administration interface. It also provides a certificate request and self-signed
certificate generator. The self-signed certificate has extension .sbrpvk and is in the
PKCS12 format. OpenSSL can convert this into a PEM format certificate and key:
openssl pkcs12 –in sbr_certkey.sbrpvk –nodes –out
sbr_certkey.pem
The sbr_certkey.pem file contains both certificate and key. If loading the SBR
certificate into XPort Pro as an authority, you will need to edit it.
1. Open the file in any plain text editor.
2. Delete all info before “----- BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----“and after “-----
END CERTIFICATE-----“, and then save as sbr_cert.pem.
SBR accepts trusted-root certificates in the DER format. Again, OpenSSL can
convert any format into DER:
openssl x509 –inform pem –in mp_cert.pem –outform der –out
mp_cert.der
Note: With SBR, when the identity information includes special characters such as
dashes and periods, SBR changes the format it uses to store these strings and