Openssl Generate Server Crt Key

admin 08.12.2020 08.12.20

Openssl Generate Server Crt Key Free
Openssl Generate Server Crt Key Download
Openssl Create Crt

While Encrypting a File with a Password from the Command Line using OpenSSLis very useful in its own right, the real power of the OpenSSL library is itsability to support the use of public key cryptograph for encrypting orvalidating data in an unattended manner (where the password is not required toencrypt) is done with public keys.

Jan 31, 2010 Use your key to create your ‘Certificate Signing Request’ - and leave the passwords blank to create a testing ‘no password’ certificate. Openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr. Output: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. Apr 12, 2020 CentOS trust self signed certificate. Install SSL certificate Red Hat 7. Create self signed certificate Red Hat Linux or CentOS 7. Openssl generate self signed certificate sha256 CentOS. Generate self signed certificate from CSR. Generate private key from CRT. Create a server certificate. Next, you'll create a server certificate using OpenSSL. Create the certificate's key. Use the following command to generate the key for the server certificate. Openssl ecparam -out fabrikam.key -name prime256v1 -genkey Create the CSR (Certificate Signing Request).

The Commands to Run

Generate a 2048 bit RSA Key

You can generate a public and private RSA key pair like this:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out private.pem 2048

That generates a 2048-bit RSA key pair, encrypts them with a password you provideand writes them to a file. You need to next extract the public key file. You willuse this, for instance, on your web server to encrypt content so that it canonly be read with the private key.

Export the RSA Public Key to a File

This is a command that is

openssl rsa -in private.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem

The -pubout flag is really important. Be sure to include it.

Next open the public.pem and ensure that it starts with-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----. This is how you know that this file is thepublic key of the pair and not a private key.

To check the file from the command line you can use the less command, like this:

less public.pem

Do Not Run This, it Exports the Private Key

A previous version of the post gave this example in error.

openssl rsa -in private.pem -out private_unencrypted.pem -outform PEM

Openssl Generate Server Crt Key Free

The error is that the -pubout was dropped from the end of the command.That changes the meaning of the command from that of exporting the public keyto exporting the private key outside of its encrypted wrapper. Inspecting theoutput file, in this case private_unencrypted.pem clearly shows that the keyis a RSA private key as it starts with -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----.

Visually Inspect Your Key Files

Cs go cd key generator online. It is important to visually inspect you private and public key files to makesure that they are what you expect. OpenSSL will clearly explain the nature ofthe key block with a -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- or -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----.

You can use less to inspect each of your two files in turn:

less private.pem to verify that it starts with a -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
less public.pem to verify that it starts with a -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

The next section shows a full example of what each key file should look like.

The Generated Key Files

The generated files are base64-encoded encryption keys in plain text format.If you select a password for your private key, its file will be encrypted withyour password. Be sure to remember this password or the key pair becomes useless.

The private.pem file looks something like this:

The public key, public.pem, file looks like:

Protecting Your Keys

Depending on the nature of the information you will protect, it’s important tokeep the private key backed up and secret. The public key can be distributedanywhere or embedded in your web application scripts, such as in your PHP,Ruby, or other scripts. Again, backup your keys!

Remember, if the key goes away the data encrypted to it is gone. Keeping aprinted copy of the key material in a sealed envelope in a bank safety depositbox is a good way to protect important keys against loss due to fire or harddrive failure.

Oh, and one last thing.

If you, dear reader, were planning any funny business with the private key that I have just published here. Know that they were made especially for this series of blog posts. I do not use them for anything else.

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Overview

If you are familiar with commercial certificates, you know that a certificate does not live in isolation. It it just the beginning of a chain of trust, where the root certificate is ultimately trusted because it sits on your local system.

We can create a SAN certificate with the same features, issued and signed by a Certificate Authority that we create. This has several benefits:

Better emulation of production – production certs also consist of a chain
Ease of administration – once a user trusts our CA, then any other SAN certificate we generate will also be trusted
Better browser support – not all browsers allow self-signed certs to be added into the trusted root authorities list

In this article, first we will create our own CA (Certificate Authority). Then we will use that CA to create a SAN server certificate that covers “mydomain.com” as well as any of its subdomains, “*.mydomain.com”.

If you want to test the certs we generate here, I would recommend using HAProxy. Here is a page where I describe how to do a quick HAProxy install.

Prerequisite

As a prerequisite, ensure the SSL packages are installed:

Customized openssl.cnf

The first step is to grab the openssl.cnf template available on your system. On Ubuntu this can be found at “/usr/lib/ssl/openssl.cnf”. You may find this in “/System/Library/OpenSSL/” on MacOS, and “/etc/pki/tls” on Redhat variants.

“$prefix.cnf” needs be modified with the specific information about the cert we are going to generate.

Under the [ v3_ca ] section, add the following values. For the CA, this signifies we are creating a CA that will be used for key signing.

Php generating an api key. Then under the “[ v3_req ]” section, set the following along with all the valid alternative names for this certificate.

Also uncomment the following line under the “[ req ]” section so that certificate requests are created with v3 extensions.

When we generate each type of key, we specify which extension section we want to use, which is why we can share $prefix.cnf for creating both the CA as well as the SAN certificate.

Create CA certificate

Now we will start using OpenSSL to create the necessary keys and certificates. First generate the private/public RSA key pair:

This encodes the key file using an passphrase based on AES256. Then we need to create the self-signed root CA certificate.

You can verify this root CA certificate using:

This will show the root CA certificate, and the ‘Issuer’ and ‘Subject’ will be the same since this is self-signed. This is flagged as “CA:TRUE” meaning it will be recognized as a root CA certificate; meaning browsers and OS will allow it to be imported into their trusted root certificate store.

Create Server certificate signed by CA

With the root CA now created, we switch over to the server certificate. First generate the private/public RSA key pair:

We didn’t put a passphrase on this key simply because the CA is more valuable target and we can always regenerate the server cert, but feel free to take this extra precaution.

Then create the server cert signing request:

Then generate the server certificate using the: server signing request, the CA signing key, and CA cert.

The “$prefix.key.pem” is the server private key and “$prefix.crt” is the server certificate. Verify the certificate:

This will show the certificate, and the ‘Issuer’ will be the CA name, while the Subject is the prefix. This is not set to be a CA, and the ‘Subject Alternative Name’ field contains the URLs that will be considered valid by browsers.

Server deployment

Servers like HAProxy want the full chain of certs along with private key (server certificate+CA cert+server private key). While Windows IIS wants a .pfx file. Here is how you would generate those files.

Browser Evaluation

When you first point Chrome or Firefox at the site with your SAN cert with CA signing, it will throw the same type of exceptions as a self-signed SAN cert. This is because the root CA cert is not known as a trusted source for signed certificates.

In Chrome settings (chrome://settings), search for “certificates” and click on “Manage Certificates”. On Windows this will open the Windows certificate manager and you should import the “ca.pem” file at the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” tab. This is equivalent to adding it through mmc.exe, in the “local user” trusted root store (not the computer level). On Linux, Chrome manages its own certificate store and again you should import “ca.pem” into the “Authorities” tab. This should now make the security icon turn green.

In Firefox Options (about:preferences), search for “certificates” and click “View Certificates”. Go to the “Authorities” tab and import “ca.pem”. Check the box to have it trust websites, and now the lock icon should turn green when you visit the page.

Although there is a little friction doing this import, it is a one-time cost because any other certificates that you sign with this CA are now trusted. So if a cert expires and you have to replace it, or you need to change the URLs in a SAN and refresh it, none of the browsers will have an issue with trust.

REFERENCES

https://gist.github.com/jhamrick/ac0404839b5c7dab24b5 (script for CA and SAN)

https://github.com/stanzgy/wiki/blob/master/network/openssl-self-signed-certs-cheatsheet.md (exact commands for CA, intermediate, chain, server cert, validating cert+key)

https://gist.github.com/bitoiu/9e19962b991a71165268 (original source of quick SAN with no intermediate)

https://jamielinux.com/docs/openssl-certificate-authority/create-the-root-pair.html (multiple pages of detailed lead through for CA, intermediate, and cert)

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/38782/ssl-tls-distinction-between-self-signed-cert-and-self-signed-ca-and-other-que (discussion on CA vs Self signed)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5244129/use-rsa-private-key-to-generate-public-key (discussion on RSA public/private pair and info inside)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5935369/ssl-how-do-common-names-cn-and-subject-alternative-names-san-work-together (explains how RFC 6125 from 2011 says SAN checked first)

https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/issues/854 (self signed cert no longer valid chrome 58)

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=700595&desc=2 (chrome 58 needs SAN for self-certs)

https://gist.github.com/akailash/7ec96e39d6951dd2293308e1d8055307 (wildcard SAN with CA, also shows how to add as trusted cert at linux level)

https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#EnableCommonNameFallbackForLocalAnchors (temporary workaround for chrome 58)

http://users.skynet.be/pascalbotte/art/server-cert.htm (use Jetty jar to transform pkcs12 to jks java keystore)

Openssl Generate Server Crt Key Download

NOTES

On Ubuntu, trusted root certificates sit in the directory “/etc/ssl/certs”, and can be updated using “sudo update-ca-certificates”. On Windows it is managed through the MMC Certificate Snap-In.

If you don’t want to manually type the password, you can use passin/passout:

Openssl Create Crt

Now use that CA to create the root CA certificate.

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