Sysadmin Lab

I was asked to investigate how to run certificate-based authentication on both Windows Mobile 6.5 and Symbian (Nokia) devices. The most common type of authentication when running ActiveSync is Basic Authentication. This basically means that when the client (in this case your mobile phone) makes a request, it will supply a username and password. For security, SSL encryption is used so your username and password is not sent over the Internet in cleartext. Sure, you could skip the SSL certificate [...]

Encrypting the Windows Mobile device could be a good idea. But where to you enable it? In Settings -> System -> Encryption you can only choose to encrypt the extra Memory Card. Turns out, there doesn’t seem to be a way to manually enable it but using the ActiveSync policy in Exchange 2007+ or using System Center Mobile Device Manager. When you enable this feature, the device will be rebooted and the device will be encrypted. On a Sony Ericsson [...]

If you’re using your own CA (Certificate Authority) to sync your Symbian Nokia (for example E75), you get a message saying the certificate is not trusted. Of course, you can manually just allow it permanently and you’ll be fine, but you might want to add this Root CA certificate to your Symbian? Download the CA Root certificate as a DER format and .cer file extension. Transfer the file using USB and then use the file explorer in the phone to [...]