configuring-certificate-authority-with-openssl

A Certificate Authority (CA) is the trust anchor in a PKI hierarchy, responsible for issuing, signing, and revoking digital certificates. This skill covers building a two-tier CA hierarchy (Root CA +

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Repository: xalgord/xalgorix
Last source activity: June 6, 2026 at 16:41
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Configuring Certificate Authority with OpenSSL

Overview

A Certificate Authority (CA) is the trust anchor in a PKI hierarchy, responsible for issuing, signing, and revoking digital certificates. This skill covers building a two-tier CA hierarchy (Root CA + Intermediate CA) using OpenSSL and the Python cryptography library, including CRL distribution, OCSP responder configuration, and certificate policy management.

When to Use

When deploying or configuring configuring certificate authority with openssl capabilities in your environment

When establishing security controls aligned to compliance requirements

When building or improving security architecture for this domain

When conducting security assessments that require this implementation

Common Misconfigurations & Verification

No nameConstraints on the intermediate CA: an unconstrained intermediate can sign a cert for any domain. Add a critical nameConstraints=permitted;DNS:.example.com extension and verify with openssl x509 -text -noout | grep -A2 "Name Constraints".

Missing basicConstraints=critical,CA:TRUE,pathlen:0: without pathlen:0 an issuing CA can mint further sub-CAs. Confirm the leaf certs have CA:FALSE.

Weak signature algorithm: a CA signing with sha1WithRSAEncryption (or MD5) is trivially forgeable. Force -sha256/-sha384 and reject SHA-1 with openssl x509 -text | grep "Signature Algorithm".

Root key online / not air-gapped, or RSA <4096 / not P-384: root keys must be offline. Use 4096-bit RSA or P-384 ECDSA.

keyUsage not marked critical or includes too much: CA certs need keyCertSign,cRLSign only; leaf certs must NOT have keyCertSign.

No CRL/OCSP distribution point: revocation is impossible. Verify crlDistributionPoints and authorityInfoAccess are present.

Verify the chain end-to-end: openssl verify -CAfile root.pem -untrusted intermediate.pem leaf.pem must return OK, and a cert signed by an untrusted/rogue CA MUST be rejected. Test that a cert violating a name constraint fails validation, not just that valid ones pass.

Prerequisites