SSL certificates are cool. They will be used more and more. This tutorial should be used only on development and/or test environments!
Any 'sub-string' of symbols will be just as random and high quality as any other.When does size matter?The use of these maximum-entropy passwords minimizes (essentially zeroes) the likelihood of successful 'dictionary attacks' since these passwords won't appear in any dictionary. Online 256 bit key generator. So you should always try to use passwords like these.When these passwords are used to generate pre-shared keys for protecting WPA WiFi and VPN networks, the only known attack is the use of 'brute force' trying every possible password combination. Brute force attackers hope that the network's designer (you) were lazy and used a shorter password for 'convenience'. 13, 407, 807, 929, 942, 597, 099, 574, 024, 998, 205,846, 127, 479, 365, 820, 592, 393, 377, 723, 561, 443,721, 764, 030, 073, 546, 976, 801, 874, 298, 166, 903,427, 690, 031, 858, 186, 486, 050, 853, 753, 882, 811,946, 569, 946, 433, 649, 060, 084, 096As far as the crypto experts know, the only workable 'attack' on the Rijndael (AES) cipher lying at the heart of this system is 'brute force' — which means trying each one of those many combinations of 512 bits.
Create Self-Signed Certificates Using OpenSSL on Windows 2019-03-05 by Johnny Graber One main source of problems working with encryption is the creation of your private key and your certificate. May 07, 2019 Facebook Twitter Gmail LinkedIn SSL certificates are cool. They will be used more and more. This tutorial should be used only on development and/or test environments! For a production environment please use the already trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs). This key & certificate will be used to sign other self signed certificates. That will be covered. Let's say I have an RSA (2048) keypair that I generated private.key public.key For testing purposes I'd like to generate a self-signed X509 certificate. My understanding of a certificate is that. To create a self-signed certificate using an RSA 4096 key and the SHA256 hashing algorithm, you can run the following two commands. Be aware, you need the password you set later to import your certificate.
For a production environment please use the already trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs).
This key & certificate will be used to sign other self signed certificates. That will be covered in another tutorial.
here's a video:
Generate the CA key
You'll be prompted to enter a password.
openssl genrsa -des3 -out myCA.key 2048
Generate the Certificate
openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -key myCA.key -sha256 -days 3650 -out myCA.pem
3650 means that it will be valid for 10 years. Yes!
You can optionally remove the password from the key. For development purposes it would most likely be OK.
Make a backup of the original key
Linux/Mac: cp myCA.key myCA.key.with_pwd
Windows: copy myCA.key myCA.key.with_pwd
Windows: copy myCA.key myCA.key.with_pwd
Export the CA key without a password
This is useful so you don't have to keep track of the password and/or use a script to sign self-signed SSL certificates.
openssl rsa -in myCA.key.with_pwd -out myCA.key
Convert the CA certificate from .PEM to .CRT format
openssl x509 -outform der -in myCA.pem -out myCA.crt
You may get the following errors:
How to fix OpenSSL error unable to write random state.
To fix this use this in the command line.
Windows
set RANDFILE=.rnd
Linux/Mac
export RANDFILE=.rnd
Another OpenSSL WARNING: can't open config file: /apache24/conf/openssl.cnf
This is fixable by setting an ENV variable that points to this file. I have copied this from my current Apache installation.
If you don't have it download it from this gist: https://gist.github.com/lordspace/c2edd30b793e2ee32e5b751e8f977b41
Windows: set OPENSSL_CONF=openssl.cnf
Linux: export OPENSSL_CONF=openssl.cnf
Related
One main source of problems working with encryption is the creation of your private key and your certificate. You must create the key pair correctly, have it imported at the right place and if you just miss one important option, you can go on an endless hunt for the problem – one exception at the time.
Attention: use self-signed certificates only for testing proposes. For production, make a certificate request and get a properly signed certificate from a CA.
The certificate snap-in in
mmc
can create public/private key pairs. However, creating it this way means an endless list of dialog windows where you most likely miss an important setting. I tried it a few times, but whenever I needed a new certificate, I had a slightly different dialogue to work with. In my opinion, OpenSSL is a much better approach for reliable creation of certificates. The many options you have are well described in the the OpenSSL Cookbook.Download and installation
The official site for OpenSSL lists various binary versions for Windows. The first project listed there is slproweb.com where you find the
Win64 OpenSSL v1.1.1a
package in the download section. The page looks old and outdated, but the binaries are frequently updated. When the download is complete, execute the *.exe file and go through the wizard with Next.
Create your own certificate…
To create a self-signed certificate using an RSA 4096 key and the SHA256 hashing algorithm, you can run the following two commands. Be aware, you need the password you set later to import your certificate.
opensslreq -x509 -newkeyrsa:4096 -sha256 -keyoutmy.key -outmy.crt -subj'/CN=test.com' -days600 |
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 | { varstore=newX509Store(StoreName.My,StoreLocation.LocalMachine); varcollection=store.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindBySubjectName, { Console.WriteLine($'Certificate '{myCert.FriendlyName}' is found'); Console.WriteLine($'Has private key? {myCert.HasPrivateKey}'); Console.WriteLine($'Private key: {myCert.PrivateKey.ToXmlString(true)}'); else Console.WriteLine('Certificate {0} is not found!!',name); Console.ReadKey(); |
If all works, you should get an output like this one:
If you get a CryptographicException with the message “Keyset does not exist” instead, check the permissions of the private key first. It may just need a simple fix as described here.
Conclusion
If you know those two OpenSSL commands, you can create as many certificates as you like. The export to pfx step is a tricky one, but as soon as you know that command as well, it is much simpler than the mmc alternative.