How do we authenticate using cert instead of password for REST APIs access

Juluri

Hi,

I am trying to understand if we can use cert as authentication process instead of password for REST APIs access

I checked the API document and all I can see is password based authentication only (below content is from API documentation)

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HTTP authentication Process for REST API:-

At an HTTP level, basic authentication is used for the API transactions. An HTTP header with the user name and password in a base64 string is added to each request

curl -X GET -u username:password -k 'https://<ip_address>/api/cluster? fields=version'

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Any idea if we can use  purely use certs for authentication, basically I am trying to implement password less authentication. Kindly let me know, Thanks.

Thanks,

-Srini

RobertBlackhart

Not having an intermediate CA is not a problem; it's not required.

For your last post, that would be expected. The server cert is what is sent for the client to validate the server identity. This is the same function as the certificate that you would get from going to https://google.com, for example. You local machine checks the root CA provided in that certificate and makes sure it trusts it. Passing -k to curl makes curl skip this trust check.

Right now we're trying to deal with the certificate validation going in the other way. That is, the client is sending the server a certificate and the server must declare if it trusts the root that signed it as well as the contents of it, which is where the failure is happening (the 401).

I'm not too sure what the remaining issue might be. I may have to tap out here and suggest that you open a ticket with support who may have more experience in getting this to work. If you do find the solution though, I wouldn't mind hearing what it was.