User's Manual

FILE AUTHENTICATION
Introduction to File Authentication
VX 675 R
EFERENCE GUIDE 77
A sponsor certificate is authenticated under a higher-level system certificate,
called the application partition certificate.
• Signer certificate: Certifies the right to sign and authenticate files for terminals
belonging to the sponsor.
A signer certificate is authenticated under the authority of a higher-level client
certificate (the sponsor certificate).
The required sponsor and signer certificates must either have been previously
downloaded and authenticated on the terminal, or they must be downloaded
together with the new signature and target files to authenticate.
Signer Private Keys Are Issued to Secure the File Signing Process
Signer private keys are loaded onto a smart card. This smart card is securely
delivered to the business entity that the terminal sponsor has authorized to sign,
download, and authenticate applications to run on the sponsor’s terminal.
The VeriFone CA can also issue additional sets of sponsor and signer certificates,
signer private keys to support multiple sponsors, and multiple signers for a
specific platform.
To establish the logical security of applications to download to a VX 675 terminal,
the designated signer uses the signer private key issued by the VeriFone CA as
this is a required input to the VeriShield File Signing Tool.
A signature file is generated using a signer private key. Successful authentication
depends on whether the signer private key used to sign the target file matches the
signer certificate stored in the terminal’s certificate tree.
How File
Authentication
Works
File authentication consists of three basic processes:
1 Development: The VeriShield File Signing Tool creates a signature file for
each application file to authenticate.
2 Pre-deployment: An optimal certificate structure is determined, and the
necessary certificates and keys are created.
3 Deployment: The development and pre-deployment processes, once
complete, are used in combination to prepare a terminal for deployment.
NOTE
Only one sponsor certificate is permitted per terminal. An application cannot be
loaded without both a Sponsor and signer certificate.
NOTE
The signer private keys loaded onto the smart card is the only copy of the private
key.