Installing CA certificates for 802.1x on Android

2010-11-07 01:11

My Android phone supports the encryption methods necessary to use my school’s wireless network, but it won’t connect without the proper certificate installed. There’s a very long outstanding bug on the topic, but the installation process is surprisingly straightforward! Based on this comment, I threw together a small tool, Android Certificate Installer.

The tool accepts an uploaded certificate or the URL to one. When fed a valid X.509 certificate, it generates a QR code linking to an installation page set up with the necessary HTTP header. All you have to do is scan with Barcode Scanner, press Open in Browser, and finish setting up your wireless network.

For my campus and thus this example, I use the Thawte Premium Server certificate.

Android 2.2 wireless network preferences showing no available CA certificates.

Barcode Scanner offering to open my certificate installer in the web browser.

Android 2.2 web browser opening a URL to my certificate installer and prompting for a name under which to save the certificate.

Android 2.2 wireless network preferences showing our newly-installed CA certificate.