What does "feature key is malformed" mean?

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Updated:October 14, 2014

Document ID:118484

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Question

Environment

Question

What does it mean when you get the "feature key is malformed" error while adding feature keys?

Environment

Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA), Web Security Appliance (WSA), Security Management Appliance (SMA), all versions of AsyncOS

This error will be issued if one or more of the following is true:

The email client is not displaying the key on a single line, resulting in added whitespace/s in the keys or keys being truncated.
System date and time are not current.
The key is being added to the incorrect appliance / the key was created for a different serial number.

In some cases, the problem could happen if the keys were created while the appliance was using a previous version of AsyncOS and the appliance has since been upgraded

If none of the above conditions are true but the feature keys still give the same error, then please contact Cisco TAC and we will verify the feature keys and investigate the issue.