Many embedded systems provide a web interface for maintenance tasks such as system configuration, test execution and firmware updating. Access to this interface usually needs to be restricted to authorized employees. This paper shows an efficient and cost-effective concept to secure maintenance interfaces using widespread standards and technology. By storing authorisation information in standard compliant X.509 certificate extensions Transport Layer Security (TLS) and X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) provide mutual authentication, message integrity as well as confidentiality and enable authorisation of employees. Practical experience of the implementation completes this paper.
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