SonicWALL 2.5 User Manual

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Chapter 33: 

Configuring VPN Certificates

A digital certificate is an electronic means to verify identity by a trusted third party known as a 
Certificate Authority (CA). X.509 v3 certificate standard is a specification to be used with 
cryptographic certificates and allows you to define extensions which you can include with your 
certificate. SonicWALL has implemented this standard in its third party certificate support. 

You can use a certificate signed and verified by a third party CA to use with an IKE (Internet Key 
Exchange VPN policy. IKE is an important part of IPSec VPN solutions, and it can use digital 
certificates to authenticate peer devices before setting up SAs. Without digital certificates, VPN users 
must authenticate by manually exchanging shared secrets or symmetric keys. Devices or clients 
using digital signatures do not require configuration changes every time a new device or client is 
added to the network.

A typical certificate consists of two sections: a data section and a signature section. The data section 
typically contains information such as the version of X.509 supported by the certificate, a certificate 
serial number, information, information about the user’s public key, the Distinguished Name (DN), 
validation period for the certificate, optional information such as the target use of the certificate. The 
signature section includes the cryptographic algorithm used by the issuing CA, and the CA digital 
signature.

SonicWALL security appliances support third party certificates from the following two vendors of 
Certificate Authority Certificates:
• VeriSign
• Entrust