DESCRIPTION
Several of the OpenSSL utilities can add extensions to a certificate
or certificate request based on the contents of a configuration file.
Typically the application will contain an option to point to an
extension section. Each line of the extension section takes the form:
extension_name=[critical,] extension_options |
If critical is present then the
extension will be critical.
The format of extension_options
depends on the value of extension_name.
There are four main types of extension: string extensions, multi-valued extensions, raw and arbitrary extensions.
String extensions simply have a string which contains either the
value itself or how it is obtained.
For example:
nsComment="This is a Comment" |
Multi-valued extensions have a short form and a long form. The short
form is a list of names and values:
basicConstraints=critical,CA:true,pathlen:1 |
The long form allows the values to be placed in a separate section:
basicConstraints=critical,@bs_section
[bs_section]
CA=true
pathlen=1 |
Both forms are equivalent.
The syntax of raw extensions is governed by the extension code: it
can for example contain data in multiple sections. The correct syntax
to use is defined by the extension code itself: check out the
certificate policies extension for an example.
If an extension type is unsupported then the arbitrary extension syntax must be used, see
the "ARBITRARY
EXTENSIONS" section for more details.
STANDARD EXTENSIONS
The following sections describe each supported extension in detail.
Basic Constraints.
This is a multi valued extension which indicates whether a
certificate is a CA certificate. The first (mandatory) name is
CA followed by TRUE or FALSE. If CA is TRUE
then an optional pathlen name
followed by an non-negative value can be included.
For example:
basicConstraints=CA:TRUE
basicConstraints=CA:FALSE
basicConstraints=critical,CA:TRUE, pathlen:0 |
A CA certificate must include the
basicConstraints value with the CA field set to TRUE. An end user
certificate must either set CA to FALSE or exclude the extension
entirely. Some software may require the inclusion of
basicConstraints with CA set to FALSE for end entity certificates.
The pathlen parameter indicates the maximum number of CAs that can
appear below this one in a chain. So if you have a CA with a
pathlen of zero it can only be used to sign end user certificates
and not further CAs.
Key Usage.
Key usage is a multi valued extension consisting of a list of names
of the permitted key usages.
The supporte names are: digitalSignature, nonRepudiation,
keyEncipherment, dataEncipherment, keyAgreement, keyCertSign,
cRLSign, encipherOnly and decipherOnly.
Examples:
keyUsage=digitalSignature, nonRepudiation
keyUsage=critical, keyCertSign |
Extended Key Usage.
This extensions consists of a list of usages indicating purposes
for which the certificate public key can be used for,
These can either be object short names of the dotted numerical form
of OIDs. While any OID can be used only certain values make sense.
In particular the following PKIX, NS and MS values are meaningful:
Value Meaning
----- -------
serverAuth SSL/TLS Web Server Authentication.
clientAuth SSL/TLS Web Client Authentication.
codeSigning Code signing.
emailProtection E-mail Protection (S/MIME).
timeStamping Trusted Timestamping
msCodeInd Microsoft Individual Code Signing (authenticode)
msCodeCom Microsoft Commercial Code Signing (authenticode)
msCTLSign Microsoft Trust List Signing
msSGC Microsoft Server Gated Crypto
msEFS Microsoft Encrypted File System
nsSGC Netscape Server Gated Crypto |
Examples:
extendedKeyUsage=critical,codeSigning,1.2.3.4
extendedKeyUsage=nsSGC,msSGC |
Subject Key Identifier.
This is really a string extension and can take two possible values.
Either the word hash which will
automatically follow the guidelines in RFC3280 or a hex string
giving the extension value to include. The use of the hex string is
strongly discouraged.
Example:
subjectKeyIdentifier=hash |
Authority Key Identifier.
The authority key identifier extension permits two options. keyid
and issuer: both can take the optional value "always".
If the keyid option is present an attempt is made to copy the
subject key identifier from the parent certificate. If the value
"always" is present then an error is returned if the option fails.
The issuer option copies the issuer and serial number from the
issuer certificate. This will only be done if the keyid option
fails or is not included unless the "always" flag will always
include the value.
Example:
authorityKeyIdentifier=keyid,issuer |
Subject Alternative Name.
The subject alternative name extension allows various literal
values to be included in the configuration file. These include
email (an email address) URI a uniform resource indicator, DNS (a DNS domain name), RID (a registered ID: OBJECT IDENTIFIER),
IP (an IP address), dirName (a distinguished name) and
otherName.
The email option include a special 'copy' value. This will
automatically include and email addresses contained in the
certificate subject name in the extension.
The IP address used in the IP
options can be in either IPv4 or IPv6 format.
The value of dirName should point
to a section containing the distinguished name to use as a set of
name value pairs. Multi values AVAs can be formed by preceeding the
name with a + character.
otherName can include arbitrary data associated with an OID: the
value should be the OID followed by a semicolon and the content in
standard ASN1_generate_nconf(3)
format.
Examples:
subjectAltName=email:copy,email:my@other.address,URI:http://my.url.here/
subjectAltName=IP:192.168.7.1
subjectAltName=IP:13::17
subjectAltName=email:my@other.address,RID:1.2.3.4
subjectAltName=otherName:1.2.3.4;UTF8:some other identifier
subjectAltName=dirName:dir_sect
[dir_sect]
C=UK
O=My Organization
OU=My Unit
CN=My Name |
Issuer Alternative Name.
The issuer alternative name option supports all the literal options
of subject alternative name. It does not support the email:copy option because
that would not make sense. It does support an additional
issuer:copy option that will copy all the subject alternative name
values from the issuer certificate (if possible).
Example:
issuserAltName = issuer:copy |
Authority Info Access.
The authority information access extension gives details about how
to access certain information relating to the CA. Its syntax is
accessOID;location where location has the same syntax as subject
alternative name (except that email:copy is not supported).
accessOID can be any valid OID but only certain values are
meaningful, for example OCSP and caIssuers.
Example:
authorityInfoAccess = OCSP;URI:http://ocsp.my.host/
authorityInfoAccess = caIssuers;URI:http://my.ca/ca.html |
CRL distribution points.
This is a multi-valued extension whose options can be either in
name:value pair using the same form as subject alternative name or
a single value representing a section name containing all the
distribution point fields.
For a name:value pair a new DistributionPoint with the fullName
field set to the given value both the cRLissuer and reasons fields
are omitted in this case.
In the single option case the section indicated contains values for
each field. In this section:
If the name is "fullname" the value field should contain the full
name of the distribution point in the same format as subject
alternative name.
If the name is "relativename" then the value field should contain a
section name whose contents represent a DN fragment to be placed in
this field.
The name "CRLIssuer" if present should contain a value for this
field in subject alternative name format.
If the name is "reasons" the value field should consist of a comma
separated field containing the reasons. Valid reasons are:
"keyCompromise", "CACompromise", "affiliationChanged",
"superseded", "cessationOfOperation", "certificateHold",
"privilegeWithdrawn" and "AACompromise".
Simple examples:
crlDistributionPoints=URI:http://myhost.com/myca.crl
crlDistributionPoints=URI:http://my.com/my.crl,URI:http://oth.com/my.crl |
Full distribution point example:
crlDistributionPoints=crldp1_section
[crldp1_section]
fullname=URI:http://myhost.com/myca.crl
CRLissuer=dirName:issuer_sect
reasons=keyCompromise, CACompromise
[issuer_sect]
C=UK
O=Organisation
CN=Some Name |
Issuing Distribution Point
This extension should only appear in CRLs. It is a multi valued
extension whose syntax is similar to the "section" pointed to by
the CRL distribution points extension with a few differences.
The names "reasons" and "CRLissuer" are not recognized.
The name "onlysomereasons" is accepted which sets this field. The
value is in the same format as the CRL distribution point "reasons"
field.
The names "onlyuser", "onlyCA", "onlyAA" and "indirectCRL" are also
accepted the values should be a boolean value (TRUE or FALSE) to
indicate the value of the corresponding field.
Example:
issuingDistributionPoint=critical, @idp_section
[idp_section]
fullname=URI:http://myhost.com/myca.crl
indirectCRL=TRUE
onlysomereasons=keyCompromise, CACompromise
[issuer_sect]
C=UK
O=Organisation
CN=Some Name |
Certificate Policies.
This is a raw extension. All the
fields of this extension can be set by using the appropriate
syntax.
If you follow the PKIX recommendations and just using one OID then
you just include the value of that OID. Multiple OIDs can be set
separated by commas, for example:
certificatePolicies= 1.2.4.5, 1.1.3.4 |
If you wish to include qualifiers then the policy OID and
qualifiers need to be specified in a separate section: this is done
by using the @section syntax instead of a literal OID value.
The section referred to must include the policy OID using the name
policyIdentifier, cPSuri qualifiers can be included using the
syntax:
userNotice qualifiers can be set using the syntax:
The value of the userNotice qualifier is specified in the relevant
section. This section can include explicitText, organization and
noticeNumbers options. explicitText and organization are text
strings, noticeNumbers is a comma separated list of numbers. The
organization and noticeNumbers options (if included) must BOTH be
present. If you use the userNotice option with IE5 then you need
the 'ia5org' option at the top level to modify the encoding:
otherwise it will not be interpreted properly.
Example:
certificatePolicies=ia5org,1.2.3.4,1.5.6.7.8,@polsect
[polsect]
policyIdentifier = 1.3.5.8
CPS.1="http://my.host.name/"
CPS.2="http://my.your.name/"
userNotice.1=@notice
[notice]
explicitText="Explicit Text Here"
organization="Organisation Name"
noticeNumbers=1,2,3,4 |
The ia5org option changes the type
of the organization field. In
RFC2459 it can only be of type DisplayText. In RFC3280 IA5Strring
is also permissible. Some software (for example some versions of
MSIE) may require ia5org.
Policy Constraints
This is a multi-valued extension which consisting of the names
requireExplicitPolicy or inhibitPolicyMapping and a non negative
intger value. At least one component must be present.
Example:
policyConstraints = requireExplicitPolicy:3 |
Inhibit Any Policy
This is a string extension whose value must be a non negative
integer.
Example:
Name Constraints
The name constraints extension is a multi-valued extension. The
name should begin with the word permitted or excluded followed by a ;. The rest of the name and the value
follows the syntax of subjectAltName except email:copy is not
supported and the IP form should
consist of an IP addresses and subnet mask separated by a /.
Examples:
nameConstraints=permitted;IP:192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0
nameConstraints=permitted;email:.somedomain.com
nameConstraints=excluded;email:.com
issuingDistributionPoint = idp_section |
OCSP No Check
The OCSP No Check extension is a string extension but its value is
ignored.
Example:
DEPRECATED EXTENSIONS
The following extensions are non standard, Netscape specific and
largely obsolete. Their use in new applications is discouraged.
Netscape String extensions.
Netscape Comment (nsComment) is a
string extension containing a comment which will be displayed when
the certificate is viewed in some browsers.
Example:
nsComment = "Some Random Comment" |
Other supported extensions in this category are: nsBaseUrl, nsRevocationUrl, nsCaRevocationUrl, nsRenewalUrl, nsCaPolicyUrl and nsSslServerName.
Netscape Certificate Type
This is a multi-valued extensions which consists of a list of flags
to be included. It was used to indicate the purposes for which a
certificate could be used. The basicConstraints, keyUsage and
extended key usage extensions are now used instead.
Acceptable values for nsCertType are: client, server, email, objsign, reserved, sslCA, emailCA, objCA.
ARBITRARY EXTENSIONS
If an extension is not supported by the OpenSSL code then it must be
encoded using the arbitrary extension format. It is also possible to
use the arbitrary format for supported extensions. Extreme care
should be taken to ensure that the data is formatted correctly for
the given extension type.
There are two ways to encode arbitrary extensions.
The first way is to use the word ASN1 followed by the extension
content using the same syntax as ASN1_generate_nconf(3).
For example:
1.2.3.4=critical,ASN1:UTF8String:Some random data
1.2.3.4=ASN1:SEQUENCE:seq_sect
[seq_sect]
field1 = UTF8:field1
field2 = UTF8:field2 |
It is also possible to use the word DER to include the raw encoded
data in any extension.
1.2.3.4=critical,DER:01:02:03:04
1.2.3.4=DER:01020304 |
The value following DER is a hex dump of the DER encoding of the
extension Any extension can be placed in this form to override the
default behaviour. For example:
basicConstraints=critical,DER:00:01:02:03 |