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gmallard edited this page Mar 4, 2012 · 2 revisions

Create a Test Certificate Authority (CA)

Generate Test CA's Private Key

Enter the command:

openssl genrsa -out TestCA.key 2048

This creates the Test CA's private key in PEM format (file TestCA.key).

Generate A CSR for the CA's Certificate

Enter the command:

openssl req -new -key TestCA.key -out TestCA.csr

This will result in a series of prompts. For this example, the prompts and replies are show here:

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Florida
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Orlando
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Internet Widgets Pty Ltd
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Headquarters
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:localhost
Email Address []:[email protected]

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:password
An optional company name []:

This produces a CSR for the CA, which will be self signed in the next step (file TestCA.csr).

Sign the CSR Producing the CA's Certificate

Enter the command:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in TestCA.csr -out TestCA.crt -signkey TestCA.key 

This creates the CA's self signed certificate (file TestCA.crt).