Client Certificates V/s Server Certificates

In the past I have blogged about various certificate file extensions along with their usage. Here is the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaushal/archive/2010/11/05/ssl-certificates.aspx

I use blogs as reference so that they can refer the content and I need not repeat the same thing every time. Saves time and helps others too.

This time I though of writing another blog explaining the difference between Client Certificates and Server Certificates. Something which is not clearly understood by everyone. I will be discussing this strictly in context of IIS only. (There are several types of certificates. you will come to know later Smile)

One of my colleagues, David Dietz has already published a KB article relating to this:

IIS and client certificates: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907274

The above documentation is good enough to understand the difference between client and server certificates along with error messages associated with them.

Lets start off in an Layman’s language and then I’ll discuss it in complete depth.

    How are Client and Server Certificates different?

Server Certificates: Server Certificates are used to identify a server. Typically they are issued to hostnames, which could be a machine name (like “PIIS-SVR01”) or a host-header (like “www.Microsoft.com”). Both client and server certificates have the “Issued to” section. For a server certificate the “Issued to” section’s value would specify the hostname for which it has been issued.

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