ZyXEL Communications Corporation WAC6553D-E Manuel D’Utilisation

Chapter 11 Certificates

NWA5000 / WAC6500 Series User’s Guide

• 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 NWA/WAC. 

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. 

Before you import a trusted certificate into the NWA/WAC, 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 MD5 or SHA1 algorithm. The following procedure describes 
how to check a certificate’s fingerprint to verify that you have the actual certificate. 

Browse to where you have the certificate saved on your computer. 

Make sure that the certificate has a “.cer” or “.crt” file name extension.

Double-click the certificate’s icon to open the Certificate window. Click the Details tab and scroll 
down to the Thumbprint Algorithm and Thumbprint fields. 

Use a secure method to verify that the certificate owner has the same information in the 
Thumbprint Algorithm and Thumbprint fields. The secure method may very based on your 
situation. Possible examples would be over the telephone or through an HTTPS connection.