x.500 Certificate information and extensions

[Screamingiraffe]

[X.509 CERTIFICATE INFORMATION]

DER: Distinguished Encoding Rules

Extension: .der (can be: .cer)

Notepad: No / Binary

Use: Java certificates

Public Key: Yes

Private Key: Yes

Password protected: No

Typical use: Java certificates

 

PEM: Privacy-Enhanced Mail

Extension: .pem (can be: .cer, (.key for private key by using OpenSSL))

Notepad: Yes / ASCII

Public Key: yes

Private Key: Yes

Password protected:

Typical use: All platforms / encrypted email

 

PKCS#12: Public Key Cryptography Standards #12

Successor to .PFX (created by Microsoft)

Extension: .p12, (.pfx if older format)

Notepad: Yes / ASCII

Public Key: Yes

Private Key: Yes

Password protected: Yes

Note: Can store multiple certificates (root, chain, certificate, anchor)

 

PKCS7: Public Key Cryptography Standards #7

Extension: .p7b

Notepad: Yes / ASCII

Public Key: Yes

Private Key: No

Typical Use: Microsoft Windows Applications, Java Tomcat

 

CER: Certificate

Can be encoded as either BINARY (similar to .der) or ASCII (similar to .pem)

Extension: .cer, .crt

Notepad:  Depends on encoding (see above statement)

Public Key: Yes

Private Key: No

Password protected: No

Typical Use: Microsoft Windows applications