What is a "CSR" and how do I get one?

CSR is a Certificate Signing Request

Basic overview

This file contains pieces of information about your cert and your public key.

It is used by the CA or Certification Authority (here : CAcert Inc.) to sign your cert (and obviously the info included in the cert).

The CA does not need the private key you have generated. You keep your private key secret.

The CA uses this CSR file to grab the info, verifying the info from your account and then generate the real certificate that you ( and your services) will use during secure communications with clients (HTTPS,SSL,POP3/SSL, etc.) and servers.

(based on Bruno ideas on CAcert support mailing list)

Example of CSR

tools to generate CSRs

• Win32

  My Certificate Wizard part of OpenVPN GUI for Windows wrapper for the Win32 OpenSSL port

• Linux/Unix/*nix

  CSRGenerator is a friendly shell script with CAcert focus

  OpenSSL [SimpleApacheCert]

• If you're using IIS have a look at:

  http://www.cacert.org/help.php?id=3 http://isaserver.org/tutorials/2004wildcardcert.html (to be verified)

• if you're using openssl have a look at:

  http://wiki.cacert.org/HELP/4

• OpenSSL users can also look at DigitCert's CSR wizard, which will generate the OpenSSL command-line you need to type in order to generate the CSR locally: https://www.digicert.com/easy-csr/openssl.htm

Analyse your CSR data block

see Analyse CSR

More info

see here and there

Official OpenSSL stuff

You can get some more info reading the official OpenSSL documentation.

http://www.openssl.org/docs/

What is a "CSR" and how do I get one?

CSR is a Certificate Signing Request

Basic overview

This file contains pieces of information about your cert and your public key.

It is used by the CA or Certification Authority (here : CAcert Inc.) to sign your cert (and obviously the info included in the cert).

The CA does not need the private key you have generated. You keep your private key secret.

The CA uses this CSR file to grab the info, verifying the info from your account and then generate the real certificate that you ( and your services) will use during secure communications with clients (HTTPS,SSL,POP3/SSL, etc.) and servers.

(based on Bruno ideas on CAcert support mailing list)

Example of CSR

tools to generate CSRs

• Win32

  My Certificate Wizard part of OpenVPN GUI for Windows wrapper for the Win32 OpenSSL port

• Linux/Unix/*nix

  CSRGenerator is a friendly shell script with CAcert focus

  OpenSSL [SimpleApacheCert]

• If you're using IIS have a look at:

  http://www.cacert.org/help.php?id=3 http://isaserver.org/tutorials/2004wildcardcert.html (to be verified)

• if you're using openssl have a look at:

  http://wiki.cacert.org/HELP/4

• OpenSSL users can also look at DigitCert's CSR wizard, which will generate the OpenSSL command-line you need to type in order to generate the CSR locally: https://www.digicert.com/easy-csr/openssl.htm

Analyse your CSR data block

see Analyse CSR

More info

see here and there

Official OpenSSL stuff

You can get some more info reading the official OpenSSL documentation.

http://www.openssl.org/docs/