Is it possible to copy a certificate from a smart card to the computer and use it to login to a certain site. On mac, those certificates appear in Keychain and they can be saved to disk, but I'm not sure how to force a site to prompt a dialog screen to choose the certificate. When the smart card is connected, the prompt somehow appears and asks to choose a certificate.
asked Jan 2, 2018 at 15:58 3,496 4 4 gold badges 29 29 silver badges 36 36 bronze badgesThe smartcard contains a key pair composed by a private key and a public key wrapped into a X509 certificate.
It is possible to export the certificate and copy to your laptop but to identify, sign or decrypt it is necessary to use the private key. The private key is usually generated on the smartcard and is not extractable. This is part of the security that the card provides: All operations are performed inside the card
answered Jan 2, 2018 at 16:29 38.9k 5 5 gold badges 100 100 silver badges 149 149 bronze badges but in my keychain I can also view the private keys Commented Jan 2, 2018 at 16:34KeyChain is showing your available keys and certificates including that there is a private key into the smartcard and it can be used, but it does not mind that it is extractable. Duplicating private keys goes against the purpose of smartcards.