NAME¶
pki - Simple public key infrastructure (PKI) management tool
SYNOPSIS¶
command [
option ...]
-h |
--help
DESCRIPTION¶
pki is a suite of commands that allow you to manage a simple public key
infrastructure (PKI).
Generate RSA and ECDSA key pairs, create PKCS#10 certificate requests containing
subjectAltNames, create X.509 self-signed end-entity and root CA certificates,
issue end-entity and intermediate CA certificates signed by the private key of
a CA and containing subjectAltNames, CRL distribution points and URIs of OCSP
servers. You can also extract raw public keys from private keys, certificate
requests and certificates and compute two kinds of SHA-1-based key IDs.
COMMANDS¶
- -h, --help
- Prints usage information and a short summary of the available
commands.
- -g, --gen
- Generate a new private key.
- -s, --self
- Create a self-signed certificate.
- -i, --issue
- Issue a certificate using a CA certificate and key.
- -c, --signcrl
- Issue a CRL using a CA certificate and key.
- -z, --acert
- Issue an attribute certificate.
- -r, --req
- Create a PKCS#10 certificate request.
- -7, --pkcs7
- Provides PKCS#7 wrap/unwrap functions.
- -k, --keyid
- Calculate key identifiers of a key or certificate.
- -a, --print
- Print a credential (key, certificate etc.) in human readable form.
- -p, --pub
- Extract a public key from a private key or certificate.
- -v, --verify
- Verify a certificate using a CA certificate.
EXAMPLES¶
Generating a CA Certificate¶
The first step is to generate a private key using the
--gen command. By
default this generates a 2048-bit RSA key.
pki --gen > ca_key.der
This key is used to create the self-signed CA certificate, using the
--self command. The distinguished name should be adjusted to your
needs.
pki --self --ca --in ca_key.der \
--dn "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" > ca_cert.der
Generating End-Entity Certificates¶
With the root CA certificate and key at hand end-entity certificates for clients
and servers can be issued. Similarly intermediate CA certificates can be
issued, which in turn can issue other certificates. To generate a certificate
for a server, we start by generating a private key.
pki --gen > server_key.der
The public key will be included in the certificate so lets extract that from the
private key.
pki --pub --in server_key.der > server_pub.der
The following command will use the CA certificate and private key to issue the
certificate for this server. Adjust the distinguished name, subjectAltName(s)
and flags as needed (check
pki --issue(8) for more options).
pki --issue --in server_pub.der --cacert ca_cert.der \
--cakey ca_key.der --dn "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=VPN Server" \
--san vpn.strongswan.org --flag serverAuth > server_cert.der
Instead of storing the public key in a separate file, the output of
--pub
may also be piped directly into the above command.
Generating Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL)¶
If end-entity certificates have to be revoked, CRLs may be generated using the
--signcrl command.
pki --signcrl --cacert ca_cert.der --cakey ca_key.der \
--reason superseded --cert server_cert.der > crl.der
The certificate given with --cacert must be either a CA certificate or a
certificate with the
crlSign extended key usage (--flag crlSign). URIs
to CRLs may be included in issued certificates with the --crl option.
SEE ALSO¶
pki --gen(1),
pki --self(1),
pki --issue(1),
pki --signcrl(1),
pki --acert(1),
pki --req(1),
pki --pkcs7(1),
pki --keyid(1),
pki --print(1),
pki --pub(1),
pki --verify(1)