cfssl

CFSSL

CloudFlare's PKI/TLS toolkit

CFSSL is CloudFlare's PKI/TLS swiss army knife. It is both a command line tool and an HTTP API server for signing, verifying, and bundling TLS certificates. It requires Go 1.4 to build.

Note that certain linux distributions have certain algorithms removed (RHEL-based distributions in particular), so the golang from the official repositories will not work. Users of these distributions should install go manually to install CFSSL.

Installation

Installation requires a working Go installation and a properly set GOPATH.

$ go get -u github.com/cloudflare/cfssl/cmd/cfssl

will download and build the CFSSL tool, installing it in $GOPATH/bin/cfssl. To install the other utility programs that are in this repo:

$ go get -u github.com/cloudflare/cfssl/cmd/...

This will download, build, and install cfssl, cfssljson, and mkbundle into $GOPATH/bin/.

Using the Command Line Tool

The command line tool takes a command to specify what operation it should carry out:

   sign             signs a certificate
   bundle           build a certificate bundle
   genkey           generate a private key and a certificate request
   gencert          generate a private key and a certificate
   serve            start the API server
   version          prints out the current version
   selfsign         generates a self-signed certificate

Use "cfssl [command] -help" to find out more about a command. The version command takes no arguments.

Signing

cfssl sign [-ca cert] [-ca-key key] [-hostname comma,separated,hostnames] csr [subject]

The csr is the client's certificate request. The -ca and -ca-key flags are the CA's certificate and private key, respectively. By default, they are "ca.pem" and "ca_key.pem". The -hostname is a comma separated hostname list that overrides the DNS names and IP address in the certificate SAN extension. For example, assuming the CA's private key is in /etc/ssl/private/cfssl_key.pem and the CA's certificate is in /etc/ssl/certs/cfssl.pem, to sign the cloudflare.pem certificate for cloudflare.com:

cfssl sign -ca /etc/ssl/certs/cfssl.pem \
           -ca-key /etc/ssl/private/cfssl_key.pem \
           -hostname cloudflare.com ./cloudflare.pem

It is also possible to specify csr through '-csr' flag. By doing so, flag values take precedence and will overwrite the argument.

The subject is an optional file that contains subject information that should be used in place of the information from the CSR. It should be a JSON file with the type:

{
    "CN": "example.com",
    "names": [
        {
            "C": "US",
            "L": "San Francisco",
            "O": "Internet Widgets, Inc.",
            "OU": "WWW",
            "ST": "California"
        }
    ]
}

Bundling

cfssl bundle [-ca-bundle bundle] [-int-bundle bundle] \
             [-metadata metadata_file] [-flavor bundle_flavor] \
             -cert certificate_file [-key key_file]

The bundles are used for the root and intermediate certificate pools. In addition, platform metadata is specified through '-metadata' The bundle files, metadata file (and auxiliary files) can be found at cfssl_trust

Specify PEM-encoded client certificate and key through '-cert' and '-key' respectively. If key is specified, the bundle will be built and verified with the key. Otherwise the bundle will be built without a private key. Instead of file path, use '-' for reading certificate PEM from stdin. It is also acceptable the certificate file contains a (partial) certificate bundle.

Specify bundling flavor through '-flavor'. There are three flavors: 'optimal' to generate a bundle of shortest chain and most advanced cryptographic algorithms, 'ubiquitous' to generate a bundle of most widely acceptance across different browsers and OS platforms, and 'force' to find an acceptable bundle which is identical to the content of the input certificate file.

Alternatively, the client certificate can be pulled directly from a domain. It is also possible to connect to the remote address through '-ip'.

cfssl bundle [-ca-bundle bundle] [-int-bundle bundle] \
             [-metadata metadata_file] [-flavor bundle_flavor] \
             -domain domain_name [-ip ip_address]

The bundle output form should follow the example

{
    "bundle": "CERT_BUNDLE_IN_PEM",
    "crt": "LEAF_CERT_IN_PEM",
    "crl_support": true,
    "expires": "2015-12-31T23:59:59Z",
    "hostnames": ["example.com"],
    "issuer": "ISSUER CERT SUBJECT",
    "key": "KEY_IN_PEM",
    "key_size": 2048,
    "key_type": "2048-bit RSA",
    "ocsp": ["http://ocsp.example-ca.com"],
    "ocsp_support": true,
    "root": "ROOT_CA_CERT_IN_PEM",
    "signature": "SHA1WithRSA",
    "subject": "LEAF CERT SUBJECT",
    "status": {
        "rebundled": false,
        "expiring_SKIs": [],
        "untrusted_root_stores": [],
        "messages": [],
        "code": 0
    }
}

Generating certificate signing request and private key

cfssl genkey csrjson

To generate a private key and corresponding certificate request, specify the key request as a JSON file. This file should follow the form

{
    "hosts": [
        "example.com",
        "www.example.com"
    ],
    "key": {
        "algo": "rsa",
        "size": 2048
    },
    "names": [
        {
            "C": "US",
            "L": "San Francisco",
            "O": "Internet Widgets, Inc.",
            "OU": "WWW",
            "ST": "California"
        }
    ]
}

Generating self-signed root CA certificate and private key

cfssl genkey -initca csrjson | cfssljson -bare ca

To generate a self-signed root CA certificate, specify the key request as the JSON file in the same format as in 'genkey'. Three PEM-encoded entities will appear in the output: the private key, the csr, and the self-signed certificate.

Generating a remote-issued certificate and private key.

cfssl gencert -remote=remote_server [-hostname=comma,separated,hostnames] csrjson

This is calls genkey, but has a remote CFSSL server sign and issue a certificate. You may use -hostname to override certificate SANs.

Generating a local-issued certificate and private key.

cfssl gencert -ca cert -ca-key key [-hostname=comma,separated,hostnames] csrjson

This is generates and issues a certificate and private key from a local CA via a JSON request. You may use -hostname to override certificate SANs.

Starting the API Server

CFSSL comes with an HTTP-based API server; the endpoints are documented in doc/api.txt. The server is started with the "serve" command:

cfssl serve [-address address] [-ca cert] [-ca-bundle bundle] \
            [-ca-key key] [-int-bundle bundle] [-port port]   \
            [-remote remote_server]

Address and port default to "127.0.0.1:8888". The -ca and -ca-key arguments should be the PEM-encoded certificate and private key to use for signing; by default, they are "ca.pem" and "ca_key.pem". The -ca-bundle and -int-bundle should be the certificate bundles used for the root and intermediate certificate pools, respectively. These default to "ca-bundle.crt" and "int-bundle." If the "remote" option is provided, all signature operations will be forwarded to the remote CFSSL.

The amount of logging can be controlled with the -loglevel option. This comes before the serve command:

cfssl -loglevel 2 serve

The levels are:

• 1. DEBUG
• 1. INFO (this is the default level)
• 1. WARNING
• 1. ERROR
• 1. CRITICAL

The mkbundle Utility

mkbundle is used to build the root and intermediate bundles used in verifying certificates. It can be installed with

go get -u github.com/cloudflare/cfssl/cmd/mkbundle

It takes a collection of certificates, checks for CRL revocation (OCSP support is planned for the next release) and expired certificates, and bundles them into one file. It takes directories of certificates and certificate files (which may contain multiple certificates). For example, if the directory intermediates contains a number of intermediate certificates,

mkbundle -f int-bundle.crt intermediates

will check those certificates and combine valid ones into a single int-bundle.crt file.

The -f flag specifies an output name; -loglevel specifies the verbosity of the logging (using the same loglevels above), and -nw controls the number of revocation-checking workers.

The cfssljson Utility

Most of the output from cfssl is in JSON. The cfssljson will take this output and split it out into separate key, certificate, CSR, and bundle files as appropriate. The tool takes a single flag, -f, that specifies the input file, and an argument that specifies the base name for the files produced. If the input filename is "-" (which is the default), cfssljson reads from standard input. It maps keys in the JSON file to filenames in the following way:

• if there is a "cert" (or if not, if there's a "certificate") field, the file "basename.pem" will be produced.
• if there is a "key" (or if not, if there's a "private_key") field, the file "basename-key.pem" will be produced.
• if there is a "csr" (or if not, if there's a "certificate_request") field, the file "basename.csr" will be produced.
• if there is a "bundle" field, the file "basename-bundle.pem" will be producd.

Additional Documentation

Additional documentation can be found in the "doc/" directory:

• api.txt: documents the API endpoints
• bootstrap.txt: a walkthrough from building the package to getting up and running