Q: What is stored in an MIT Personal Certificate?

Answer

Information stored in the certificate includes:

• Your "real name" as defined in your Athena account information
• Your email address @MIT.EDU
• The expiration date of your certificate
• The words "Massachusetts Institute of Technology"
• The name of our state (Massachusetts)
• The internationally recognized country code for our country (US)
• A 2048-bit RSA public key, uniquely created when you visit ca.mit.edu
• A serial number, uniquely identifying the certificate

It is not possible to obtain the following information directly from your certificate:

• MIT ID number
• Account class (i.e., staff, student, etc)
• password
• anything else not listed above

Each site that uses certificates handles them differently; however, most use the email address field to look up information that they need (such as MIT ID number, etc).

Quick Links

• Certificates Landing Page
• Certificates at MIT.
• Test my certificate