Allied Telesis AT-S63 - Manual (Page 796)

Chapter 34: PKI Certificates and SSL
796 Section VIII: Management Security
PKI
Implementation
The following sections discuss Allied Telesyn’s implementation of PKI for
the AT-9400 Series switches. The following topics are covered:
ˆ PKI Standards
ˆ Certificate Retrieval and Storage
ˆ Certificate Validation
ˆ Root CA Certificates
PKI Standards
The following standards are supported by the switch:
ˆ draft-ietf-pkix-roadmap-05 — PKIX Roadmap
ˆ RFC 1779 — A String Representation of Distinguished Names
ˆ RFC 2459 — PKIX Certificate and CRL Profile
ˆ RFC 2511 — PKIX Certificate Request Message Format
ˆ PKCS #10 v1.7 — Certification Request Syntax Standard
Certificate Retrieval and Storage
Certificates are stored by CAs in publicly accessible repositories for
retrieval by end entities. The following repositories used in PKI are
commonly accessed via the following protocols: Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Before the switch can use a certificate, it must be retrieved and manually
added to the switch’s certificate database, which is stored in RAM
memory. The switch attempts to validate the certificate, and if validation is
successful the certificate’s public key is available for use.
Root CA Certificate Validation
Root CA certificates are verified out of band by comparing the certificate’s
fingerprint (the encrypted one-way hash with which the issuing CA signs
the certificate) with the fingerprint which the CA has supplied by a non-
network-based method. To view a certificate’s fingerprint, use the
procedure described in “Viewing a Certificate” on page 809.