WPA Certificates ... again

[elwaywitvac]

After searching the topic, I noticed there were a few others but none of them solve my problem.

To start with, same old issue of installing a certificate, then I go to connect to the WLAN and I don't see my certificate as a choice in the drop down.

Here are the details. The certificate does not have the WLAN's name anywhere in it as far as I can tell, it's installed as an authority, not as a user cert, the encryption type is WPA TLS, and the name is just "wireless user.pem"

If anybody could help me, that would be great (also, reconfiguring routers and what not is not possible, I live on a university campus.)

[hephaestus]

I have found a trick to getting the certificut manager to accept your certs. Instead of using the linux certs go and get the Apple OSX user cert and use it instead. From that point on the cert appears in the dropdown menu. Dont forget to remove the non functioning Linux cert.

[gplus]

So what I have to do in order to get the "user certificate" in OS X? Please advice. Thanks!

[slider]

yes, how is this done? thx.

[joeinternet]

Odds are, you only imported the public portion of your certificate. For EAP-TLS, you will need a PKCS12 certificate. This contains both public and private components of your SSL certificate protected with a passphrase. These certificates typically have the extension .p12 or .pfx.

You can create one if you have the public and private components of your SSL certificate. Using OpenSSL, the following command will work:

openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey /path/to/your/private-cert.key \
-in /path/to/your/public-cert.pem \
-out /path/to/where/you/want/your/pkcs12-cert.p12

You will be prompted to provide a passphrase. Your certificate extensions may be different than the example above (certificate.pem, etc.)

When you import this certificate into your N800, you will be asked to supply the passphrase as well as to create a new one. It is this key you will be using for WPA EAP-TLS authentication.

If the name on the cert is the same as the public-only cert you imported, you will not be able to import the pkcs12 cert on the N800. I don't know how you remove the old cert once it's been imported short of wiping the handheld and starting fresh.

-Joe