I would suggest you get a copy of gpg and use the command line utils to examine the contents of the files. They can dump the packets and other things so you can tell what is in them. openssl also has a set of tools that deal with this kind of stuff, so you might want to snag a copy of that too.
Once you have some basic knowledge, the rest should be easier. I think most people have avoided answering because you don't seem to have any inkling of what is going on and they fear being sucked into a tar baby. YMMV Mark Jones ________________________________________ From: adfm [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 11:01 AM To: Crypto++ Users Subject: how the hell do I use a certificate?! OK, I've been going through cryptopp trying to decrypt a a file and I am having some trouble right from the start. How fun is this? ;) I was given a certificate in a pfx file and I extracted the certificate from it I then proceeded to decrypt the text. I loaded the certificate's private key like this: string decoded; CryptoPP::RSA::PrivateKey private_key; FileSource file_pk("key.cert", true, new Base64Decoder); private_key.Load( file_pk ); this fails miserably with a "BER decode error". Well, I got to openssl and did a openssl asn1parse of the certificate and it is encoded in PEM (at least it ouputs a ton a things that make sense). The certificate is in this form -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIICuzCCAiSg(...)BBQUAMGkxCzAJBgNV (...) /9kfj2B6h78n(...)3xJQMApR5yXW0IkEg== -----END CERTIFICATE----- So my question is how do I use this certificate in PEM? Just some dumb doubts: - Is the certificate the private key? - In this format do I need to decode in from base64 or will the decoder do it implicitly? - Why is this list so quiet? I read someone complaining that posting here is like discovering an abandoned civilization.... As you might have guesses I've posted a bit in the couple of days to no avail. Some of this question concerns my previous post, so... Cheers -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Crypto++ Users" Google Group. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected]. More information about Crypto++ and this group is available at http://www.cryptopp.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Crypto++ Users" Google Group. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected]. More information about Crypto++ and this group is available at http://www.cryptopp.com.
