Thursday, March 13, 2003

Platform: Pocket PC 2002

I was testing out an installation of Microsoft's Mobile Information Server, and didn't want to run it with obtaining a spendy SSL certificate from Verisign, Thawte, etc. I maintain my own internal SSL Certificate Server, so I gave my MIS installation a certificate. Problem is, this certificate is not trusted by the Pocket PC 2002 platform (in my case, a Dell Axim). So, how could I get it do this? The documentation for MIS seems to indicate that it cannot be done. But that is incorrect. On Microsoft Support Base Article #Q322956, example code is given to add root certificates to a Pocket PC device, with compiled example code to make it rock. This allowed me to get ActiveSync up and going with MIS, and expose my server to the internet. One could argue it's even a little better for security--other people's devices wouldn't necessarily trust my internal certificates. :-)