What is the difference between a cer pvk and pfx file

Question

What is the difference between a cer  pvk  and pfx file  Also  which files do I keep and which am I expected to give to my counter-parties

User · Answer

In Windows platform  these file types are used for certificate information  Normally used for SSL certificate and Public Key Infrastructure  X 509     CER files  CER file is used to store X 509 certificate  Normally used for SSL certification to verify and identify web servers security  The file contains information about certificate owner and public key  A CER file can be in binary  ASN 1 DER  or encoded with Base-64 with header and footer included  PEM   Windows will recognize either of these layout  PVK files  Stands for Private Key  Windows uses PVK files to store private keys for code signing in various Microsoft products  PVK is proprietary format  PFX files Personal Exchange Format  is a PKCS12 file  This contains a variety of cryptographic information  such as certificates  root authority certificates  certificate chains and private keys  It   s cryptographically protected with passwords to keep private keys private and preserve the integrity of the root certificates  The PFX file is also used in various Microsoft products  such as IIS    for more information visit Certificate Files   Cer x  Pvk x  Pfx

User · Answer

Windows uses  cer extension for an X 509 certificate  These can be in  binary   ASN 1 DER   or it can be encoded with Base-64 and have a header and footer applied  PEM   Windows will recognize either  To verify the integrity of a certificate  you have to check its signature using the issuer s public key    which is  in turn  another certificate   Windows uses  pfx for a PKCS  12 file  This file can contain a variety of cryptographic information  including certificates  certificate chains  root authority certificates  and private keys  Its contents can be cryptographically protected  with passwords  to keep private keys private and preserve the integrity of root certificates   Windows uses  pvk for a private key file  I m not sure what standard  if any  Windows follows for these  Hopefully they are PKCS  8 encoded keys  Emmanuel Bourg reports that these are a proprietary format  Some documentation is available   You should never disclose your private key  These are contained in  pfx and  pvk files    Generally  you only exchange your certificate   cer  and the certificates of any intermediate issuers  i e   the certificates of all of your CAs  except the root CA  with other parties

User · Answer

Here are my personal  super-condensed notes  as far as this subject pertains to me currently  for anyone who s interested   Both PKCS12 and PEM can store entire cert chains  public keys  private keys  and root  CA  certs   pfx     p12     quot PKCS12 quot   fully encrypted    pem     cer     cert     quot PEM quot   or maybe not    could be binary    see comments      base-64  string  encoded X509 cert  binary  with a header and footer  base-64 is basically just a string of  quot A-Za-z0-9   quot  used to represent 0-63  6 bits of binary at a time  in sequence  sometimes with 1 or 2  quot   quot  characters at the very end when there are leftovers   quot   quot  being  quot filler junk ignore throw away quot  characters  the header and footer is something like  quot -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- quot  and  quot -----END CERTIFICATE----- quot  or  quot -----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY----- quot  and  quot -----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY----- quot    Windows recognizes  cer and  cert as cert files    jks     quot Java Key Store quot   just a Java-specific file format which the API uses   p12 and  pfx files can also be used with the JKS API      quot Trust Stores quot  contain public  trusted  root  CA  certs  whereas  quot Identity Key Stores quot  contain private  identity certs  file-wise  however  they are the same

User · Answer

I actually came across something like this not too long ago    check it out over on msdn   see the first answer  in summary    cer - certificate stored in the X 509 standard format  This certificate contains information about the certificate s owner    along with public and private keys   pvk - files are used to store private keys for code signing  You can also create a certificate based on  pvk private key file   pfx - stands for personal exchange format  It is used to exchange public and private objects in a single file   A pfx file can be created from  cer file   Can also be used to create a Software Publisher Certificate   I summarized the info from the page based on the suggestion from the comments

[security] What is the difference between a cer, pvk, and pfx file?

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