Obtaining Certificates to Identify a Specific Entity

SourcePro : Secure Communication Module User’s Guide : PART II Secure Sockets Package : Using Secure Sockets : Obtaining Certificates : Obtaining Certificates to Identify a Specific Entity

To get a certificate for a server (or client, if you want client authentication), follow these steps:

1. Create a public and private key pair using the cryptographic library’s utilities.

2. Create a certificate request using the key pair and the cryptographic library’s utilities.

3. Send the certificate request to a certificate authority, along with identification and a fee.

4. The certificate authority will send back a signed certificate with a specified validity period (usually one year).

NOTE: You may need to convert the certificate to PEM format using the utilities in the cryptographic library.

5. Use the certificate with RWX509Certificate. Your application can pass the certificate to the setCertificate() or setIdentity() functions of RWSecureSocketContext or RWSecureSocket. For more information about RWX509Certificate, see Constructing a Certificate.

For more information, see the examples\secsock\certs directory and its subdirectories. These directories contain readme.txt files and scripts used with OpenSSL to create the example certificate infrastructure.