PEM is a widely used format for security certificates. Syntax and content are defined by X.509 v3 standards for digital certificates and its specifications are defined in IETF RFC 5280.

A PEM certificate is a base64 (ASCII) encoded block of data encapsulated between two header lines:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

and

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

While, Private Keys use the identifier:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

and

-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

The most used file extensions for PEM files are .pem, .crt, .ca-bundle but you may find it under other extensions too.

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If you are not sure whether your certificate file is in PEM format, contact our Support team before uploading it.

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