Web services

SSL/TLS

Generate a CSR

• Last tested on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (trusty) | easy | less than five minutes

This will generate a 2048-bit key (secure & insecure) and CSR for usage on a website. CSR is short for Certificate Signing Request and is usually requested by CA (Certificate Authority) when trying to obtain a SSL/TLS certificate.

1. Create a secure key for CSR

$ openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 2048
Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus
.....................+++
....................+++
e is 65537 (0x10001)
Enter pass phrase for server.key:
Verifying - Enter pass phrase for server.key:

2. Create an insecure key for CSR sourcing from the secure one

$ openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.insecure
Enter pass phrase for server.key:
writing RSA key

3. Rename the keys

$ mv server.key server.key.secure
$ mv server.key.insecure server.key

4. Create the CSR

$ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr