Formats

General Object Format

All objects are formatted in the Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) style, beginning with a line in the format. Below is a sample object format:

and end with:

In this sample, <object> is a placeholder for the name of the object type: CERTIFICATE or ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY.

Certificate Format

A certificate is encoded as a general object with the identifier string CERTIFICATE or X.509 CERTIFICATE. The base64 data encodes a Bit Error Rate (BER)-encoded X.509 certificate. This is the same format used for PEM. Anyone who provides or understands PEM-format certificates can accommodate the certificate format. For example, VeriSign commonly fulfills certificate requests with certificates in this format, SSLeay supports them, and SSL servers understand them. Both Netscape and Microsoft support this format for importing root CA certificates.

Private Key Format

A private key is encoded as a general object with the identifier string ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY. The base64 data encodes a BER-encoded PKCS#8 Private Key object. The passphrase associated with the Private Key is required for Connect:Direct Secure Plus and is stored in the Secure+ parameters file. Additional encryption is used to prevent the passphrase from being discovered.