This week the WinRM ruby gem version 1.8.0 released adding support for certificate authentication. Many thanks to the contributions of @jfhutchi and @elpetak that make this possible. As I set out to test this feature, I explored how certificate authentication works in winrm using native windows tools like powershell remoting. My primary takeaway was that it was not at all straightforward to setup. If you have worked with similar authentication setups on linux using SSH commands, be prepared for more friction. Most of this is simply due to the lack of documentation and google results (well now there is one more). Regardless, I still think that once setup, authentication via certificates is a very good thing and many are not aware that this is available in WinRM.

This post will walk through how to configure certificate authentication, enumerate some of the “gotchas” and pitfalls one may encounter along the way and then explain how to use certificate authentication using Powershell Remoting as well as via the WinRM ruby gem which opens up the possibility of authenticating from a linux client to a Windows WinRM endpoint.