certstrap

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Tools to bootstrap CAs, certificate requests, and signed certificates.

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# certstrap
[![godoc](http://img.shields.io/badge/godoc-certstrap-blue.svg?style=flat)](https://godoc.org/github.com/square/certstrap)
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A simple certificate manager written in Go, to bootstrap your own certificate authority and public key infrastructure.  Adapted from etcd-ca.

certstrap is a very convenient app if you don't feel like dealing with openssl, its myriad of options or config files.

## Common Uses

certstrap allows you to build your own certificate system:

1. Initialize certificate authorities
2. Create identities and certificate signature requests for hosts
3. Sign and generate certificates

## Certificate architecture

certstrap can init multiple certificate authorities to sign certificates with.  Users can make arbitrarily long certificate chains by using signed hosts to sign later certificate requests, as well.

## Examples

## Getting Started

### Building

certstrap must be built with Go 1.18+. You can build certstrap from source:

```
$ git clone https://github.com/square/certstrap
$ cd certstrap
$ go build
```

This will generate a binary called `certstrap` under project root folder.

### Initialize a new certificate authority:

```
$ ./certstrap init --common-name "CertAuth"
Created out/CertAuth.key
Created out/CertAuth.crt
Created out/CertAuth.crl
```

Note that the `-common-name` flag is required, and will be used to name output files.

Moreover, this will also generate a new keypair for the Certificate Authority,
though you can use a pre-existing private PEM key with the `-key` flag.

If the CN contains spaces, certstrap will change them to underscores in the filename for easier use.  The spaces will be preserved inside the fields of the generated files:

```
$ ./certstrap init --common-name "Cert Auth"
Created out/Cert_Auth.key
Created out/Cert_Auth.crt
Created out/Cert_Auth.crl
```

### Request a certificate, including keypair:

```
$ ./certstrap request-cert --common-name Alice
Created out/Alice.key
Created out/Alice.csr
```

certstrap requires either `-common-name` or `-domain` flag to be set in order to generate a certificate signing request.  The CN for the certificate will be found from these fields.

If your server has mutiple ip addresses or domains, use comma seperated ip/domain/uri list. eg: `./certstrap request-cert -ip $ip1,$ip2 -domain $domain1,$domain2 -uri $uri1,$uri2`

If you do not wish to generate a new keypair, you can use a pre-existing private
PEM key with the `-key` flag

### Sign certificate request of host and generate the certificate:

```
$ ./certstrap sign Alice --CA CertAuth
Created out/Alice.crt from out/Alice.csr signed by out/CertAuth.key
```

#### PKCS Format:
If you'd like to convert your certificate and key to PKCS12 format, simply run:
```
$ openssl pkcs12 -export -out outputCert.p12 -inkey inputKey.key -in inputCert.crt -certfile CA.crt
```
`inputKey.key` and `inputCert.crt` make up the leaf private key and certificate pair of your choosing (generated by a `sign` command), with `CA.crt` being the certificate authority certificate that was used to sign it.  The output PKCS12 file is `outputCert.p12`

### Key Algorithms:
Certstrap supports curves P-224, P-256, P-384, P-521, and Ed25519. Curve names can be specified by name as part of the `init` and `request_cert` commands:

```
$ ./certstrap init --common-name CertAuth --curve P-256
Created out/CertAuth.key
Created out/CertAuth.crt
Created out/CertAuth.crl

$ ./certstrap request-cert --common-name Alice --curve P-256
Created out/Alice.key
Created out/Alice.csr
```

### Retrieving Files

Outputted key, request, and certificate files can be found in the depot directory.
By default, this is in `out/`

## Project Details

### Contributing

See [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md) for details on submitting patches.

### License

certstrap is under the Apache 2.0 license. See the [LICENSE](LICENSE) file for details.

certstrap

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