How to read pcks#7 personal digital certificates with python?

Question

is it possible to read personal digital certificates with extension Pcks#7 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509#Certificate_filename_extensions ) with python? I have to develop an application using Django that authenticate its users by reading their certificate.

In an initial step we are going to use an external services to accomplish this but it would be nice to understand how to develop a personal solution.

Any information about the subject is higly appreciated, thanks!

Federico

Answer 1

You've tagged your question with "django" and you've mentioned logging in users using certificates. Sorry to say the rest of your question doesn't make much sense to me.

If your question is "How to I authenticate users in my Django website using SSL certificate authentication?"

Then my suggestion would be to use apache to handle the authentication:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ssl/ssl_howto.html#accesscontrol

And write yourself custom authentication backend to hook this up with Django.
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#authentication-backends

Not tried it myself, I presume it's possible to get mod_ssl to place something useful in the request environment.