This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Wannan tattunawa ta zama daɗaɗɗiya. Yi sabuwar tambaya idan ka na bukatar taimako.

Problem importing a root certificate authority from IE environment

  • 1 amsa
  • 35 sa na da wannan matsala
  • 1 view
  • Amsa ta ƙarshe daga trs1980

more options

I created a self-signed trusted root authority certificate using Microsoft's makecert utility - this is for a test environment... I imported it into the IE environment using Microsoft's MMC utility and it works fine. Using IE I can browse to our test server using https with no problem.

When I export that certificate out of the IE environment (using MMC) in a base64 format (DER also) and try to import it into Firefox I get an error, "This is not a certificate authority certificate, so it can't be imported into the certificate authority list." How can I get firefox to trust a test CA certificate?

I created a self-signed trusted root authority certificate using Microsoft's makecert utility - this is for a test environment... I imported it into the IE environment using Microsoft's MMC utility and it works fine. Using IE I can browse to our test server using https with no problem. When I export that certificate out of the IE environment (using MMC) in a base64 format (DER also) and try to import it into Firefox I get an error, "This is not a certificate authority certificate, so it can't be imported into the certificate authority list." How can I get firefox to trust a test CA certificate?

All Replies (1)

more options

One potential cause of this problem - Firefox will not import self-signed root CA certificates that are missing the value "Subject Type=CA" in the Basic Constraints field (visible on the Details tab when you view the certificate in Windows.) Contact the person who supplied you with the test self-signed root authority certificate and tell them that they need to add that constraint to either the certificate request or the command line when making the self-signed root CA certificate. The switch on makecert is -cy authority. I found the following helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/496658/using-makecert-for-development-ssl