I have an SSL certificate I purchased in a .pem, .crt, .der format. I was wondering how I get the key file from the certificate. Is there any way of doing this?
You can extract the public key. This has limited usefulness. Perhaps you are going to use the same key with another tool like SSH or PGP that doesn't use certificates.
With OpenSSL:
openssl x509 -pubkey -noout < cert.pem > pubkey.pem
You can't derive the private key from a certificate. That would make the whole thing quite pointless, wouldn't it?
Related
I'm having problems understanding the difference between files produced by openssl and how to detect them.
For example I'm trying to generate Self-signed cert with private key and generate JKS file from p12
format. I'm googling like a madman but I still don't know how to generate it correctly to be able to use following commands.
openssl pkcs12 -export -in user.pem -inkey user.key -certfile user.pem -out testkeystore.p12
keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore testkeystore.p12 -srcstoretype pkcs12 -destkeystore wso2carbon.jks -deststoretype JKS
Source: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/how-generate-jks-keystore-existing-private-key
I found a couple of different commands to generate Self-signed cert and private key but I don't know how to map resulting files to the commands above and whats worse I don't understand what those commands do.
I mean I see what files they generate and understand that certificate and private key used to sign it ( or maybe the other way around :| ) but what is the difference between those commands and is cert.pem === certificate.crt - Those file extensions are driving me crazy.
openssl req -x509 -sha256 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout privateKey.key -out certificate.crt
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 3650 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem
This is yet another situation where I'm having similar issues with the openssl command. At this point I'm even ready to read some RFC ( I hope it won't come to this :) )
Thanks in advance for help
Those file names represent different parts of the key generation and verification process. Please note that the names are just convention, you could just as easily call the files pepperoni.pizza and the content will be the same, so do be conscious of how you use the filenames.
A brief primer on PKI - Keys come in two halves, a public key and a private key. The public key can be distributed publicly and widely, and you can use it to verify, but not replicate, information generated using the private key. The private key must be kept secret.
.key files are generally the private key, used by the server to encrypt and package data for verification by clients.
.pem files are generally the public key, used by the client to verify and decrypt data sent by servers. PEM files could also be encoded private keys, so check the content if you're not sure.
.p12 files have both halves of the key embedded, so that administrators can easily manage halves of keys.
.cert or .crt files are the signed certificates -- basically the "magic" that allows certain sites to be marked as trustworthy by a third party.
.csr is a certificate signing request, a challenge used by a trusted third party to verify the ownership of a keypair without having direct access to the private key (this is what allows end users, who have no direct knowledge of your website, confident that the certificate is valid). In the self-signed scenario you will use the certificate signing request with your own private key to verify your private key (thus self-signed). Depending on your specific application, this might not be needed. (needed for web servers or RPC servers, but not much else).
A JKS keystore is a native file format for Java to store and manage some or all of the components above, and keep a database of related capabilities that are allowed or rejected for each key.
The commands you list look fine to me, and I don't see a question beyond asking what the different files are for. If you need more information, please enrich your question.
.key is the private key. This is accessible the key owner and no one else.
.csr is the certificate request. This is a request for a certificate authority to sign the key. (The key itself is not included.)
.crt is the certificate produced by the certificate authority that verifies the authenticity of the key. (The key itself is not included.) This is given to other parties, e.g. HTTPS client.
.pem is a text-based container using base-64 encoding. It could be any of the above files.
-----BEGIN EXAMPLE-----
...
-----END EXAMPLE-----
.p12 is a PKCS12 file, which is a container format usually used to combine the private key and certificate.
There isn't only one extension. For example you may see certificates with either the .crt or a .pem extension.
Just to add more info: .der, another (binary) encoding (either public or private key, or csr)
I have received three files from my hosting company who bought the X.509 certificate for me.
.key file - thats the private key
.cert file - ?
.cacert file - ?
Whats the difference between the two?
By using the following command:
openssl x509 -noout -text -in <filename>
I have found out that .cert is public key certificate of my own site and .cacert is the intermediate certificate authority who issued the certificate.
I need to upload a qualified certificate in .pfx file, I have .req and .pfx with private key files from requesting the certificate, and I got the qualified .crt certificate from the company that do these. How can I join the password and the certificate with qualified roots?
I already tried openssl Openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey KEYFILENAME -in CERTFILEFILENAME -out final.pfx
output was: error in pkcs12, expecting: any private key
Thank you, this is very important for me.
You say you have '.pfx with private key' but do not say anything about a PEM-format private key. The input for pkcs12 -export -inkey must be a PEM-format private key.
Extract the privatekey from the existing/original pfx with openssl pkcs12 -in oldpfx -nocerts without -export and either store it in a file and feed that to -inkey, or just concatenate with your cert and pipe the combination to openssl pkcs12 -export without -in -inkey.
Note this 'joins' the privatekey and the certificate, but there is no permanent linkage to any password(s); each privatekey file (PEM format or pfx/p12) can be encrypted with any password you choose (except openssl will usually reject very short passwords) and they don't need to be the same, and each can be changed without changing the privatekey (and cert) -- although you may well choose to make them and keep them the same for your own convenience.
Also note that certificates issued by public CAs like Verisign and GoDaddy etc usually depend on intermediate aka chain certificates, and in many perhaps most cases software that uses a pfx/pf12 needs it to contain those intermediate/chain certs. However, you didn't give any clues about this in your Q and there are so many possible variations of how to select, get, convert and use chain certs I couldn't fit them all in one SO answer.
For school we are currently studying SSL certificates.
For this week's assignment we had to install Fedora Workstation on VirtualBox and do some SSL-stuff.
One of the assignments was the following:
generate a public/private keypair and a CSR with the openssl command.
I generated a public/private keypair using the following command:
openssl genrsa -out Desktop/mykey.key 2048
After I generated the keypair I had to verify it. But how do you verify a key? What is really meant by that? Just get out the public key and check if it matches the private key? This is the first question.
I generated the CSR using the following command:
openssl req -new -key Desktop/mykey.key -out Desktop/myCSR.csr
This is the right way, right?
Checking/verifying the CSR file was done using this command:
openssl req -text -noout -verify -in Desktop/myCSR.csr
I think that's the right way too.
This was the "easy" part, now comes the harder part:
We had to use xca to create a database and a CA Root Certificate. Then we had to import the csr from above question and sign it. I signed it by right clicking on it and choosing sign. Then we had to export both the CA and the signed key and verify it. But what do they mean exactly? My guess is to verify that the certificate is signed by the CA, but I'm having problems with that.
We have to use openssl x509 for that, but it just isn't working.
When I right click the signed key and export it as a PEM file, in that file is the following:
----- BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST -----
MIIC6......
----- BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST -----
while the assigment says: export the signed certificate. But is this even a certificate?
And how do I verify it?
I used many commands, like
openssl x509 -in Desktop/exported.pem -text -noout
But the output I get is always something like this:
I have tried all sorts of commands and read all google pages, but nothing helps.
this is the second question
Hope you all can help, Thanks!
When you verify a certificate, you are checking whether it's CA is recognised, and it matches the CA's fingerprint. It doesn't look like you are providing the CA cert to the openssl command. Try specifying -CA <your CA cert file:
$ openssl x509 --help
...
-CA arg - set the CA certificate, must be PEM format.
I'm am trying to create a very simple WCF client application which will send SOAP messages to a 3rd party service. All the messages must be digitally signed. It's really a proof of concept before I add the code to a larger application.
I have a .cer file containing the certificate and a .pem file containing the private key. What I have been trying to do is load the certificate using the .cer file then fire off a message. But I get the following error "The private key is not present in the X.509 certificate".
The problem, well one of the problems, is that I really know almost nothing about WCF, digital certificates, private keys and all that guff. I've done some reading, I've Googled till I'm blue in the face and I've not got anywhere.
If I open the .cert file there is a section labelled "BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY" which suggests that the private key is included in the certificate. So, why am I getting a message saying that it is not present? Also, if the private key does need to be added to the certificate how do I do it?
Here basically what I'm doing. It's not my actual code, but it includes all the relevant stuff:
MyWSClient c = new MyWSClient();
c.ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate.Certificate = new X509Certificate2(#"pathToFile.cer");
c.SomeValidCall();
How are you creating this cert / key pair? You can combine them into a PKCS#12 certificate using openssl:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in yourcert.crt -inkey yourprivkey.key -out newcert.p12
You may need to play with the input format to get it to work with a .pem private key.
My colleague has found a solution. I don't know why but using a .der file rather than a .cer file solves the problem. This is the command he used to generate the .der file using a certificate, private key and root certificate as.pem files:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in cert.pem -inkey private_key.pem -certfile root_cert.cer -out pkcs12.der