Certificate Authority Management Utilities

This repo contains helpful and easy to use utilities for managing the public key infrastructure (PKI) at your organization, or for yourself. You can do a lot here:

• Generate a Root Certificate Authority
• Create Intermediate CAs, like a TLS, Code-signing, or Email CA
• Sign and issue web server certificates for your domains
• Create personal email and browser PKCS-12 certificates for email and web-based authentication

This project heavily utilizes OpenSSL and requires Bash.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Creating a Root Certificate Authority
   1. Update Config File
   2. Run Utility
3. Creating Intermediate Certificate Authorities
   1. Run Utilities
4. Creating a Web SSL Certificate for a Domain
   1. Run Utility
5. Creating a Client SSL Certificate
   1. Run Utility
   2. Browser Bundle
6. Final Notes
   1. Security
   2. Web Server Install
   3. Browser Install
   4. Known Issues

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1. Introduction

All of the utilities are in the bin directory. These files use the config files in the etc directory. There's no reason to ever edit any thing in these two folders.

When you run the tools, they will create the folders ca, certs, and crl. These will contain your generated certificates, private keys, certificate signing requests, certificate revocation lists, database, and serial files that OpenSSL generates.

2. Creating a Root Certificate Authority

The first thing you'll want to do is create the Root CA. This is the master certificate and key that will sign all of the Intermediate CAs. Intermediate CAs are the TLS CA for signing both web server and web client certificates, the Software CA for signing software packages, and the Email CA for signing S/MIME certificates.

Structuring your PKI hierarchy this way allows the Root key to stay private or behind multiple layers of security. The Intermediate keys, if ever exposed, could be revoked without putting the entire system in jeopardy. This is a best practice that we'll adhere to in these utilities.

2.1 Update Config File

Update the config file in this directory to have the correct names and info. These names will be embedded into the certificates.

2.2 Run Utility

To generate the Root CA:

$> ./bin/root-ca.sh

This will guide you through the set-up process. It will create the following files and folders:

• /ca Certificate Authority files
  • /root-ca Root CA files, certificates and signing requests
    • /db Root CA database and serial files
    • /private Key files, this is untracked in git
      • RootCA.key Private key file for Root CA
    • RootCA.crt Certificate file
    • RootCA.csr Signing request file
• /crl Ceritificate revocation lists
  • RootCA.crl Public revocation list file, this should ultimately go on your webserver. The URL will be embedded into certificates.

3. Creating Intermediate Certificate Authorities

Now that we have the Root CA, we'll create all of the Intermediate CAs. The only required one to finish this guide is the TLS CA but it's simple to generate them all.

3.1 Run Utilities

To generate the TLS CA:

$> ./bin/tls-ca.sh

This will guide you through the set-up process. It will create the following files and folders:

• /ca
  • /tls-ca TLS CA files, certificates and signing requests
    • /db TLS CA database and serial files
    • /private Key files, this is untracked in git
      • TLSCA.key Private key file for Root CA
    • TLSCA.crt Certificate file
    • TLSCA.csr Signing request file
    • TLSCAChain.pem Chained certificate file containing the Root and TLS CA certificates.
• /crl
  • TLSCA.crl Public revocation list file, this should ultimately go on your webserver. The URL will be embedded into certificates.

Similar files are created for the other two Intermediate CAs. To generate the Software CA:

$> ./bin/software-ca.sh

To generate the Email CA:

$> ./bin/email-ca.sh

4. Creating a Web SSL Certificate for a Domain

The TLS CA is used to sign web server certificates, which is the most common application and use-case for PKI and probably why you're here :P

Creating a new server certificate is simple, and you can just follow the on-screen instructions. Just make sure to read the few instructions included. Please remember these three things:

1. The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is usually of the form www.domain.com.
2. When adding FQDNs at the beginning, add both the www and non-www domains. For example, both www.example.org and example.org. The script will prompt you to add as many as you'd like. You can probably even do a wildcard but I haven't tested that yet.
3. When adding the Organization Name during the CSR questions, make sure it's the same "Company Name" you have in your config file. Otherwise, the process will halt and you will have to start over! This is an OpenSSL quirk.

4.1 Run Utility

To generate a new web server certificate:

$> ./bin/server.sh

This will create the following files and folders:

• /certs Server and client files
  • /tls-ca TLS CA signed files
    • /private Key files, this is untracked in git
      • example.org.key Private key file for your web domain. Your web server will need this file.
    • example.org.crt Web domain certificate file
    • example.org.csr Signing request file
    • example.org.bundle.pem Certificate bundle containing the server's signed and issued certificate, the Intermediate TLS CA's certificate, and the Root CA's certificate. Your web server will need this file.

5. Creating a Client SSL Certificate

An often unused, but very powerful security mechanism is PKCS-12 client certificate authentication. These are certificates issued to people or devices that are signed by the Intermediate CA and grant that person or device access to the web server. In nginx, this is done by using ssl_client_certificate and pointing that config optionto the TLSCAChain.pem file copied to your web server.

This utility will generate a password protected .p12 file that the user can import into their web browser. You can then set up your web server to optionally require a client certificate for access. This client certificate replaces the need for the user to keep a password and provides greater security to any application.

5.1 Run Utility

To generate a client certificate:

$> ./bin/client.sh

Here are some helpful notes:

1. This will prompt you to create a password for the client's private key. Make sure you enter one at least 4 characters long or the script will halt.
2. During the CSR process, it will ask your for the "Organization Name". Make sure this is the same as the "Company Name" in the config file.
3. During the CSR process, enter the user's name into the "Common Name" field, and enter their email address into the "Email Address" field.
4. You will need the TLS CA private key password to sign this client certificate.

The following files are generated:

• /certs
  • /tls-ca
    • /private
      • stallman_richard.key Private key file for the client.
      • stallman_richard.p12 P12 browser bundle file. This needs to be imported into the browser along with the trusted Root CA certificate file.
    • stallman_richard.crt Client certificate file
    • stallman_richard.csr Signing request file

5.2 Browser Bundle

At the end of the script, you are asked if you want to generate a "client certificate bundle". This is the .p12 file from earlier. If you do this, you will be prompted for a name to embed into the file. This name will display to the user when they are asked by their browser to select a certificate.

You do not need to enter an export password but it is strongly recommended that you do. The .p12 files should be treated like private keys since they contain both the public and private key parts.

6. Final Notes

6.1 Security

Always make sure .key and .p12 files remain untracked. This is automatically done for you through .gitignore files but it's important that you know this. These files should also be chmod 400 to protect them on the web server.

6.2 Web Server Install

Your web server will want the example.org.key and example.org.bundle.pem files for it to load the SSL correctly. If you're using client certificates, also copy over the TLSCAChain.pem file.

6.3 Browser Install

Once you create a server certificate, your browser will not immediately trust it. To do this automatically for all server certificates that you create, add your Root CA certificate file to your browser's list of trusted authorities. This is the file RootCA.crt (or similarly named) in the ca folder.

If you're on MacOS, double click this file and make sure you open it again in KeyChain, expand the Trust tab, and ensure that everything is always trusted.

For Chrome, go to Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Manage Certificates. This will prompt KeyChain in MacOS or show you a window with an Authorites tab. If you see the Chrome Certificates window, then go to the Authorities tab and click "Import" and select the Root CA certificate file. Make sure you trust this authority.

For Firefox, go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Certificates and click "View Certificates". Click the Authorities tab and then click "Import" and select the Root CA certificate file. Make sure you trust this authority.

You may need to restart your browser for this to take effect, since SSL is often cached.

6.4 Known Issues

Here is a list of the current limitations and planned updates:

1. There's no way to revoke certificates really. This is needed to be added as as a command in some of the scripts.
2. CRLs would then need to be inspected to see if they're working with the revokations. CRLs are also difficult to get onto a public web server. This problem, if solved, should be documented here.

At this point, it's still somewhat unclear to me what the databases and serial files are that get generated. I think I need to spend more time with revokations to understand that.