certificates

An opinionated helper for generating tls certificates

Programming language: Go

License: MIT License

Tags: Security    

Latest version: v0.6.0

README

Certificates helper

This is an opinionated helper for generating tls certificates. It outputs only in PEM format but this enables you easily generate certificate chains for MA TLS.

cert package

The cert package can be used directly in your application without the need of the command line interface, underlying database layer or external dependencies. This way certificate generation can be easily embedded.

Documentation can be found here.

CLI Tool

Installation

Currently you can use it by building it locally, checking the releases or with docker:

docker run mvmaasakkers/certificates cert gen-ca --cn=*.test.domain --stdout

Usage

Generate a CA set

You can generate a CA set by using the generate-ca subcommand like the following example:

certificates cert gen-ca --cn=*.test.domain --stdout

This will output the key and certificate directly to stdout like this (parts are omitted for readability):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIJJwIBAAKCAgEA0txN/brNlBcGrU8mAxL8V19pS1dWEVVTF82LDahI7FMsPPkM
sg5iBCLwYJhnVRPucUmcGC1NyljCy/yW0Cbwl5aNWozAfEkiUpWsukn/ZcMuXvac
qsPRK0Xswbr305NDRnlphoeutyzXAhW2P4FQGCwSfx/Mlaezphc7AreLKg==
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIE3zCCAsegAwIBAgIFANHEYb4wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAwDzENMAsGA1UEAxME
P9g8SpNaf6jNS0ULG8+DJ7dwdHes7IWA0BtjDkur4Ya+ey/FwowgMeEnc/h10Adc
az7b
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

By default the certificates are written to files ca.key and ca.crt.

Generate a certificate

This needs a pregenerated CA certificate and key (see "Generate a CA set").

To generate a signed certificate pair you can use the following example:

certificates cert gen --cn=local.test.domain --stdout

This will output the key and certificate directly to stdout like this (parts are omitted for readability):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIJFAIBAAKCAf0Z7/5ZYgOo4gHfAPAPN0vKWEVJ5D97wvnYUq00DcaRPCZZopXl
XUcctgAb3kw27ohTm31KnVEnN8ibeUg2fz+LO/xYVvhD2BMkoe1gk/2JAogPUi1l
jWjI7fuKGwlyHimeYnUx1ADRlShBgHGr
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIE/TCCAuWgAwIBAgIFFPmGQ70wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAwDzENMAsGA1UEAxME
V964wCgh6TgfUtt9RabcM3MWtAR18N0vedYg46jhxDa1b+/brQWLuxXDsKIVHrRP
M6ZzVSUF1PH+Ok2Fm7EP26Yax3RkoPrgmlLqL/1fRJaJ
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

By default a file (file.db) database is created to keep track of unique certificate serialnumbers. This is advised only for dev and test environments. The CA database can be one of the following flavours of sql: mysql, postgresql or mssql.

To change key generation bitsize use the --bitsize flag (default is 4096, options are 2048 and 4096).

To use a pre-existing csr to use during the generation give the path to the csr file using the --csr flag.

Development setup

This module uses Go modules for dependency management. To run:

• go run main.go

And this will output:

NAME:
   Certificates - An opinionated TLS certificate generator.

USAGE:
   main [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]

VERSION:
   v...

DESCRIPTION:
   An opinionated TLS certificate generator.

COMMANDS:
     certificate, cert  certificate commands
     help, h            Shows a list of commands or help for one command

GLOBAL OPTIONS:
   --help, -h     show help
   --version, -v  print the version