Using OpenSSL to Generate Digital Certificates

Using OpenSSL to generate Digital Certificates

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Literature review...................................................................................................................................4
Methodologies......................................................................................................................................7
Experiment Analysis with identify Cryptography technique (for security)..........................................10
Future scope........................................................................................................................................14
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................15
References...........................................................................................................................................16
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Introduction
The report is all about discussing usage of OpenSSL for generating digital certificates in brief. The
report will briefly cover the parts of OpenSSL used in making digital certificates. OpenSSL is a tool
which consisting of qualities such as overwhelming, finish ensured, Endeavour audit which is used in
conditions like transport layer security (TLS) and Secure socket layer (SSL). It can also be used for
performing cryptography. It works as a software library for various applications that can be used to
provide a secured communication in a computer network. It can also be used to identify the parties
that are taking part I the communication. Due to its various features, it is widely used in internet
webs servers and provides its features to them. It is open source software and can be used for TLS
and SSL protocols. Its core library is written in C language and can be used to implement
cryptographic functions which in turn can provide various securities based utility functions. Due to
its wrapping facility, it can be used with various computer languages available (Liu, 2015).
OpenSSL has an apache style license which means it is free to use whether it is commercial or non-
commercial. This is due to its simple conditions which allow the user to use the service considering
no worry. Now discussing its versions it started in 1998 when the product was launched and the first
version was 1.0. In April 2014 a bug came in its TLS heartbeat extension which released up to 64 KB
memory per memory. This was named as Heartbleed bug an attacked half million web users on the
internet the current version of the OpenSSL is named as 1.0.1G and is the improvement of the bug
named Heartbleed. It can be used with public key infrastructure and HTTPS also (HTTP and TLs).
Since OpenSSL is used in TLS and SSL one should have known about both of them. TLS can be said as
a successor to Secure sockets layer protocol (SSL). It is used to provide a secure and reliable end to
end communication. It is used in popular services like email, internet faxing, and various services
using data transfer. The TLS 1.0 is same as SSL 3.0 because of having same protocol. TLS operates in
the application layer of the OSI model. TLS generates a handshake protocol which is used to
determine client and server at both the ends. Also, it ensures to begin a cryptographic algorithm
through which client and server can share their messages securely. So before data exchange, the
communication is established using handshake protocol which ensures that client and server are
connected to each other in a network. This provides authenticity to the network and the client-
server identify each other. In between communication, TLS ensures that no third party user can
access any data in between the communication. It protects the external users from attacking the
network. TLS's main goal is to provide security and integrity. TLS version 1.0 is used in RFC
documentary (Liu, 2015).
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When communicating online SSL creates encrypted links between client and server so as to provide
a secure and better communication between them. When using SSL it is to be sure that the data
transmitted will be encrypted at its best level. For establishing an SSL connection it is necessary to
generate SSL certificate. There are two cryptographic keys which are used: a private key and public
key. An SSL certificate consists of the domain name, company name, and other details. Forgetting a
certificate, a certificate signing request should be created. Now the CSR file is then sent to SSL
certificate that creates public and private keys for the server. The certification Authority and CSR
data are used for making public and private keys (Arthur, 2015).
Digital certificate can be said as an electronic password that can be used to secure a connection
using public key cryptography. Digital certificates are used in information security systems and are
the main part of RSA algorithm. RSA uses public key cryptography method in which it resides. The
main aim of digital certificate is to provide privacy of data to client and server. It is also knows as
public key certificate and identity certificate. It is issued by a trusted authority named certification
authority. They are used in message encryption. It works as:
The certification authority provides a digital certificate to sender with sender's public key. The
sender has its public key and public key of CA with him at the time of sending message. When the
message is being send the sender collects the essentials like its public key, CA's public key, data to be
send and many more. Now these essentials are sent as a whole message to the receiver. At the
receiver's end it is provided with the public key of sender through which it can identify the sender
and decrypt the message. So the receiver identifies sender with help of digital certificate and thus
decrypts the message and receives it. IT also sends the sender an acknowledgement type message
that he has received his message securely. The information which is provided to sender is for
example name, serial number, date of expiration with digital certificate. This ensures the privacy of
message Digital certificate is one of the popular techniques used for security in internet. They assure
that the data communicated between sender and receiver gets contained with them only. There are
various cryptographic techniques available but with use of digital certificate one can trust with the
network. Digital certificates assure authenticity and legitimacy. The web servers that do not use or
that use fake digital certificates are not trusted one and they might not help in securing user's data.
The most used digital certificate is X509 (Shiakorn, 2017).
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