ediSecurityCertificate

The ediSecurityCertificate object contain an X.509 Digital Certificate.  A Digital Certificate is a file containing the public key of an entity, which has been verified by a third-party of its validity.  The third-party is also known as a Certificate Authority (CA), and it verifies that the owner of the certificate is who he claims to be by signing the certificate with CAs own certificate.  The certificate only contains the public key and, since the public key is not a secret, the certificate can be distributed and published to any trading partner without any loss of security to the owner.  The trading partner can then use this certificate for encrypting data and verifying signatures.  The certificate does not contain the private key, but it can be associated to a private key.  It can, for example, contain the name of a private key file, or contain information that associates it to a Cryptographic Service Provider key container.  So should the certificate ever be referenced where it is needed to decrypt or sign data, the associated private keys can be used for the operation.

There are three properties of the certificate that makes it unique:

• Subject Name - Name of the entity that owns the certificate.
• Issuer Name - Name of the entity that has certified the certificate.  This is normally the name of the CA.
• Serial Number - A unique number assigned to the certificate.  This number is normally unique only to the issuer of the certificate.

Self-Signed Certificate

A self-signed certificate is a certificate that has the same subject name and issuer name.  That is, the entity has issued itself a certificate.  These certificates are not secure, and are mainly used between trading partners who are confident about their secure loop of transmission.  For Framework EDI, these self-signed certificates are normally used for testing purposes only. 

Methods

• DecryptFile - Decrypt a file.
• DetermineCSP - Attempts to associate the certificate to a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) key container.
• EncryptFile - Encrypt a file.
• ExportCertificate - Exports the certificate from the certificate store to an external file.
• ExportCertificateBase64 - Exports from the certificate store to a Base64 encoded certificate file.
• ExportCertificatePfx - Exports the certificate to a PFX file.
• ExportExtendedCertificate - Exports the certificate, together with its extended information, from the certificate store to an external file.
• GetDigitalSignature - Returns the string representation of the digital signature of the file.
• GetPublicKey - Returns the string representation of the public key.
• GetRawPublicKey - Returns the string representation of the raw public key.
• RemoveCSP - Removes the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) key container association from the certificate.
• SignFile - Signs a file.
• VerifyFile - Verifies a signed file.
• UpdateCSP - Associates the certificate in the certificate store to a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) key container.

Properties

• CspKeyContainer - Returns the name of the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) key container that has been associated with the certificate.
• CspProviderType - Returns the provider type of the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) that is associated with the certificate's key container.
• CspPublicKeyType - Returns the key pair type of the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) key container whose public key is used as the certificate's public key.
• CspServiceProvider - Returns the name of the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) that is associated with the certificate's key container.
• IssuerName - Name of the certificate that has signed and issued this certificate.
• IssuerNames - Gets all the names associated to the entity that issued the certificate.
• Name - Returns the display name of the certificate.
• PrivateKeyFile - Gets or sets the file name of the private key (PVK) file that is associated with the certificate.
• SerialNumber - Returns the hexadecimal representation of the serial number of the certificate.
• SubjectName - Returns the subject name of the certificate.
• SubjectNames - Gets all the subject names of the certificate.
• ValidFrom - Returns the starting date that the certificate is valid as authorized by the issuer of the certificate.
• ValidTo - Returns the date that the certificate's validity will expire as authorized by the issuer of the certificate.
• Version - Returns the version of the certificate.