Certificate signing request - JohnHau/mis GitHub Wiki

In public key infrastructure (PKI) systems, a certificate signing request (also CSR or certification request) is a message sent from an applicant to a registration authority of the public key infrastructure in order to apply for a digital identity certificate. It usually contains the public key for which the certificate should be issued, identifying information (such as a domain name) and integrity protection (e.g., a digital signature). The most common format for CSRs is the PKCS #10 specification; another is the Signed Public Key and Challenge SPKAC format generated by some web browsers.

Before creating a CSR, the applicant first generates a key pair, keeping the private key secret. The CSR contains information identifying the applicant (such as a distinguished name in the case of an X.509 certificate) which must be signed using the applicant's private key. The CSR also contains the public key chosen by the applicant. The CSR may be accompanied by other credentials or proofs of identity required by the certificate authority, and the certificate authority may contact the applicant for further information.

Typical information required in a CSR (sample column from sample X.509 certificate). Note that there are often alternatives for the Distinguished Names (DN), the preferred value is listed.

DN[1] Information Description Sample CN Common Name This is fully qualified domain name that you wish to secure *.wikipedia.org O Organization Name Usually the legal name of a company or entity and should include any suffixes such as Ltd., Inc., or Corp. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. OU Organizational Unit Internal organization department/division name IT L Locality Town, city, village, etc. name San Francisco ST State Province, region, county or state. This should not be abbreviated (e.g. West Sussex, Normandy, New Jersey). California C Country The two-letter ISO code for the country where your organization is located US EMAIL Email Address The organization contact, usually of the certificate administrator or IT department If the request is successful, the certificate authority will send back an identity certificate that has been digitally signed using the private key of the certificate authority.

Structure A certification request consists of three main parts: the certification request information, a signature algorithm identifier, and a digital signature on the certification request information. The first part contains the significant information, including the public key. The signature by the requester prevents an entity from requesting a bogus certificate of someone else's public key.[2] Thus the private key is needed to produce, but it is not part of, the CSR.[3]

CSR for personal ID certificates and signing certificates must have the email address of the ID holder or name of organisation in case of business ID.

The first part, ASN.1 type CertificationRequestInfo, consists of a version number (which is 0 for all known versions, 1.0, 1.5, and 1.7 of the specifications), the subject name, the public key (algorithm identifier + bit string), and a collection of attributes providing additional information about the subject of the certificate. The attributes can contain required certificate extensions, a challenge-password to restrict revocations, as well as any additional information about the subject of the certificate, possibly including local or future types.[2]

Example The PKCS#10 standard defines a binary format for encoding CSRs for use with X.509. It is expressed in ASN.1. Here is an example of how you can examine its ASN.1 structure using OpenSSL:

openssl asn1parse -i -in your_request A CSR may be represented as a Base64 encoded PKCS#10; an example of which is given below:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIICzDCCAbQCAQAwgYYxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkVOMQ0wCwYDVQQIDARub25lMQ0wCwYD VQQHDARub25lMRIwEAYDVQQKDAlXaWtpcGVkaWExDTALBgNVBAsMBG5vbmUxGDAW BgNVBAMMDyoud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZzEcMBoGCSqGSIb3DQEJARYNbm9uZUBub25l LmNvbTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAMP/U8RlcCD6E8AL PT8LLUR9ygyygPCaSmIEC8zXGJung3ykElXFRz/Jc/bu0hxCxi2YDz5IjxBBOpB/ kieG83HsSmZZtR+drZIQ6vOsr/ucvpnB9z4XzKuabNGZ5ZiTSQ9L7Mx8FzvUTq5y /ArIuM+FBeuno/IV8zvwAe/VRa8i0QjFXT9vBBp35aeatdnJ2ds50yKCsHHcjvtr 9/8zPVqqmhl2XFS3Qdqlsprzbgksom67OobJGjaV+fNHNQ0o/rzP//Pl3i7vvaEG 7Ff8tQhEwR9nJUR1T6Z7ln7S6cOr23YozgWVkEJ/dSr6LAopb+cZ88FzW5NszU6i 57HhA7ECAwEAAaAAMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4IBAQBn8OCVOIx+n0AS6WbEmYDR SspR9xOCoOwYfamB+2Bpmt82R01zJ/kaqzUtZUjaGvQvAaz5lUwoMdaO0X7I5Xfl sllMFDaYoGD4Rru4s8gz2qG/QHWA8uPXzJVAj6X0olbIdLTEqTKsnBj4Zr1AJCNy /YcG4ouLJr140o26MhwBpoCRpPjAgdYMH60BYfnc4/DILxMVqR9xqK1s98d6Ob/+ 3wHFK+S7BRWrJQXcM8veAexXuk9lHQ+FgGfD0eSYGz0kyP26Qa2pLTwumjt+nBPl rfJxaLHwTQ/1988G0H35ED0f9Md5fzoKi5evU1wG5WRxdEUPyt3QUXxdQ69i0C+7 -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- The above certificate signing request's ASN.1 structure (as parsed by openssl) appears as the following, where the first number is the byte offset, d=depth, hl=header length of the current type, l=length of content:

0:d=0  hl=4 l= 716 cons: SEQUENCE          
4:d=1  hl=4 l= 436 cons:  SEQUENCE          
8:d=2  hl=2 l=   1 prim:   INTEGER           :00

11:d=2 hl=3 l= 134 cons: SEQUENCE
14:d=3 hl=2 l= 11 cons: SET
16:d=4 hl=2 l= 9 cons: SEQUENCE
18:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :countryName 23:d=5 hl=2 l= 2 prim: PRINTABLESTRING :EN 27:d=3 hl=2 l= 13 cons: SET
29:d=4 hl=2 l= 11 cons: SEQUENCE
31:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :stateOrProvinceName 36:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: UTF8STRING :none 42:d=3 hl=2 l= 13 cons: SET
44:d=4 hl=2 l= 11 cons: SEQUENCE
46:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :localityName 51:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: UTF8STRING :none 57:d=3 hl=2 l= 18 cons: SET
59:d=4 hl=2 l= 16 cons: SEQUENCE
61:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :organizationName 66:d=5 hl=2 l= 9 prim: UTF8STRING :Wikipedia 77:d=3 hl=2 l= 13 cons: SET
79:d=4 hl=2 l= 11 cons: SEQUENCE
81:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :organizationalUnitName 86:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: UTF8STRING :none 92:d=3 hl=2 l= 24 cons: SET
94:d=4 hl=2 l= 22 cons: SEQUENCE
96:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OBJECT :commonName 101:d=5 hl=2 l= 15 prim: UTF8STRING :*.wikipedia.org 118:d=3 hl=2 l= 28 cons: SET
120:d=4 hl=2 l= 26 cons: SEQUENCE
122:d=5 hl=2 l= 9 prim: OBJECT :emailAddress 133:d=5 hl=2 l= 13 prim: IA5STRING :[email protected] 148:d=2 hl=4 l= 290 cons: SEQUENCE
152:d=3 hl=2 l= 13 cons: SEQUENCE
154:d=4 hl=2 l= 9 prim: OBJECT :rsaEncryption 165:d=4 hl=2 l= 0 prim: NULL
167:d=3 hl=4 l= 271 prim: BIT STRING
442:d=2 hl=2 l= 0 cons: cont [ 0 ]
444:d=1 hl=2 l= 13 cons: SEQUENCE
446:d=2 hl=2 l= 9 prim: OBJECT :md5WithRSAEncryption 457:d=2 hl=2 l= 0 prim: NULL
459:d=1 hl=4 l= 257 prim: BIT STRING
This was generated by supplying the base64 encoding into the command openssl asn1parse -in your_request -inform PEM -i where PEM stands for Privacy-Enhanced Mail and describes the encoding of the ASN.1 Distinguished Encoding Rules in base64.