Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate

Posted on by
-->
  1. Advantages Of Private Key Encryption
  2. Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate Pdf
  3. Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate Download

Advantages Of Private Key Encryption

With a secure shell (SSH) key pair, you can create virtual machines (VMs) in Azure that use SSH keys for authentication, eliminating the need for passwords to sign in. This article shows you how to quickly generate and use an SSH public-private key file pair for Linux VMs. You can complete these steps with the Azure Cloud Shell, a macOS or Linux host, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and other tools that support OpenSSH.

Note

When it comes to cryptographic keys that are used and accessed by your cloud-based applications, it’s crucial that they are properly protected.Enter the Azure Key Vault.The Key Vault is an Azure offering that is designed to protect cryptographic keys that are used by cloud applications and services. Using the Azure Key Vault, admins can protect and encrypt such items as.PFX files, data encryption keys, storage account keys, and even passwords.Streamlining the key management process is the primary function of the Key Vault, allowing administrators to manage control of keys that are used to access and encrypt data. Resource owners and even developers can create specific keys that provide access to applications and even development environments within minutes. Azure key vault pricing.

  • A self-signed certificate is one signed with its own private key because we don’t have a plan to signed by a CA. Self-signed certificates are valid for 1 year we need to renew once it about to expire. A local certificate authority server in your environment will help to.
  • Dec 21, 2010.

Dec 03, 2011  Linux: How to generate SSL certificate key pair. By Kaven Gagnon December 3, 2011 0 Comment. Here are the few steps to generate the private key, certificate signed request, self-signed certificate and how to get rid of the passphrase request when starting you’re application. There is a single command that can do it all (generate the. Jul 08, 2009 You can also generate self signed SSL certificate for testing purpose. In this article, let us review how to generate private key file (server.key), certificate signing request file (server.csr) and webserver certificate file (server.crt) that can be used on Apache server with modssl. Key, CSR and CRT File Naming Convention. Nov 10, 2011  How to Generate A Public/Private SSH Key Linux By Damien – Posted on Nov 10, 2011 Nov 18, 2011 in Linux If you are using SSH frequently to connect to a remote host, one of the way to secure the connection is to use a public/private SSH key so no password is transmitted over the network and it can prevent against brute force attack.

How can I find the private key for my SSL certificate. If you just got an issued SSL certificate and are having a hard time finding the corresponding private key, this article can help you to find that one and only key for your certificate. How to generate private key and CSR from command line This article describes how to generate a private key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request) from the command line. You may need to do this if you want to obtain an SSL certificate for a system that does not include cPanel access, such as a dedicated server or unmanaged VPS.

VMs created using SSH keys are by default configured with passwords disabled, which greatly increases the difficulty of brute-force guessing attacks.

For more background and examples, see Detailed steps to create SSH key pairs.

For additional ways to generate and use SSH keys on a Windows computer, see How to use SSH keys with Windows on Azure.

Supported SSH key formats

Azure currently supports SSH protocol 2 (SSH-2) RSA public-private key pairs with a minimum length of 2048 bits. Other key formats such as ED25519 and ECDSA are not supported.

Create an SSH key pair

Use the ssh-keygen command to generate SSH public and private key files. By default, these files are created in the ~/.ssh directory. You can specify a different location, and an optional password (passphrase) to access the private key file. If an SSH key pair with the same name exists in the given location, those files are overwritten.

The following command creates an SSH key pair using RSA encryption and a bit length of 4096:

If you use the Azure CLI to create your VM with the az vm create command, you can optionally generate SSH public and private key files using the --generate-ssh-keys option. The key files are stored in the ~/.ssh directory unless specified otherwise with the --ssh-dest-key-path option. The --generate-ssh-keys option will not overwrite existing key files, instead returning an error. In the following command, replace VMname and RGname with your own values:

Provide an SSH public key when deploying a VM

To create a Linux VM that uses SSH keys for authentication, specify your SSH public key when creating the VM using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager templates, or other methods:

If you're not familiar with the format of an SSH public key, you can display your public key with the following cat command, replacing ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub with the path and filename of your own public key file if needed:

A typical public key value looks like this example:

If you copy and paste the contents of the public key file to use in the Azure portal or a Resource Manager template, make sure you don't copy any trailing whitespace. To copy a public key in macOS, you can pipe the public key file to pbcopy. Similarly in Linux, you can pipe the public key file to programs such as xclip.

The public key that you place on your Linux VM in Azure is by default stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, unless you specified a different location when you created the key pair. To use the Azure CLI 2.0 to create your VM with an existing public key, specify the value and optionally the location of this public key using the az vm create command with the --ssh-key-values option. In the following command, replace VMname, RGname, and keyFile with your own values:

If you want to use multiple SSH keys with your VM, you can enter them in a space-separated list, like this --ssh-key-values sshkey-desktop.pub sshkey-laptop.pub.

SSH into your VM

With the public key deployed on your Azure VM, and the private key on your local system, SSH into your VM using the IP address or DNS name of your VM. In the following command, replace azureuser and myvm.westus.cloudapp.azure.com with the administrator user name and the fully qualified domain name (or IP address):

If you specified a passphrase when you created your key pair, enter that passphrase when prompted during the login process. The VM is added to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, and you won't be asked to connect again until either the public key on your Azure VM changes or the server name is removed from ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

If the VM is using the just-in-time access policy, you need to request access before you can connect to the VM. For more information about the just-in-time policy, see Manage virtual machine access using the just in time policy.

Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate

Next steps

  • For more information on working with SSH key pairs, see Detailed steps to create and manage SSH key pairs.

  • If you have difficulties with SSH connections to Azure VMs, see Troubleshoot SSH connections to an Azure Linux VM.

Introduction

This document describes the procedure to generate certificates which have to be uploaded with every fresh installation of AMP Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). With the introduction of AMP Private Cloud 3.X, hostnames and certificate/key pairs are required for all of the following services:

  • Administration Portal
  • Authentication (new in Private Cloud 3.X)
  • FireAMP Console
  • Disposition Server
  • Disposition Server - Extended Protocol
  • Disposition Update Service
  • Firepower Management Center

Here, we will discuss a quick way to generate and upload the required certificates. You may tweak each of the parameters, including the hashing algorithm, key size, and others, as per your organization's policy, and your mechanism of generating these certificates might not match with what is detailed here.

Prerequisites

Components Used

Cisco recommends that you have knowledge of these topics:

  • Windows Server 2008 onwards
  • AMP Private Cloud installation
  • Public Key Infrastructure

Requirements

The information in this document is based on these software and hardware versions:

  • Windows Server 2008
  • CentOS 7
  • AMP Virtual Private Cloud 3.0.2

Warning: The procedure mentioned below can vary as per your CA server configuration. It is expected that the CA server of your choice is already provisioned and the configuration of the same has been completed. The following technote just describes an example of generating the certificates and Cisco TAC will not be involved in troubleshooting issues related to certificate generation and/or CA server issues of any kind.

Generate Certificates on Window Server

Ensure that the following roles are installed and configured on your Windows Server.

  • Active Directory Certificate Services
  • Certification Authority
  • Certification Authority Web Enrollment
  • Online Responder
  • Certificate Enrollment Web Service
  • Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service
  • Active Directory Domain Services
  • DNS Servers
  • Web Server (IIS)

Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

Step 1. Navigate to MMC console, and add the Certificates snap-in for your computer account as shown in the image here.

Step 2. Drill down Certificates (Local Computer) > Personal > Certificates.

Step 3. Right click on the empty space and select All Tasks > Advanced Operations > Create Custom Request

Step 4. Click Next at the Enrollment window.

Step 5. Select your certificate enrollment policy and click Next.

Step 6. Choose the template as Web Server and click Next.

Step 7. If your 'Web Server' template has been configured correctly and is available for enrollment, you will see the status as 'Available' here. Click 'Details' to expand click on Properties.

Step 8. At a minimum, add the CN and DNS attributes. The rest of the attributes can be added as per your security requirements.

Step 9. Optionally, give a Friendly Name under the General tab.

Step 10. Click on the PrivateKey tab and ensure that you're enabling Make private key exportable under the Key Options section.

Step 11. Finally, click on OK. This should lead you to the Certificate Enrollment dialog from where you can click on Next.

Step 12. Browse to a location to save the .req file which will be submitted to the CA server for signing.

Submitting the CSR to the CA and generating the certificate

Step 1. Navigate to your MS AD Certificate Services Web Page as below and click 'Request a Certificate'

Step 2. Click on the advanced certificate request link.

Step 3. Click on Submit a certificate request by using a base-64-encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file.

Step 4. Open the contents of the previously saved .req file (CSR) via Notepad. Copy the contents and paste it here. Ensure that the Certificate Template is selected as Web Server

Step 5. Finally, click on Submit.

Step 6. At this point, you should be able to Download the certificate as shown in the image here.

Exporting the Private Key and converting to PEM format

Step 1. Install the certificate into your Certificate Store by opening the .cer file and clicking on Install Certificate.

Step 2. Navigate to the MMC snap-in that was selected earlier.

Step 3. Navigate to the store where the certificate was installed.

Step 4. Right click the correct certificate, select All Tasks > Export.

Step 5. At the Certificate Export Wizard, confirm to export the private key as shown in the image.

Step 6. Enter a password and click Next to save the private key on your disk.

Step 7. This will save the private key in .PFX format, however, this needs to be converted to .PEM format to use this with AMP VPC.

Step 8. Install OpenSSL libraries from here:https://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Binaries

Step 9. Open a command prompt window and change to the directory where you installed OpenSSL.

Step 10. Run the following command to extract the private key and save it to a new file: (If your PFX file is not in the same path as where the OpenSSL library is stored, you will have to specify the exact path along with the filename)

Step 11. Now run the following command to also extract the public cert and save it to a new file:

Generate Certificate on Linux Server

Ensure that the Linux server that you're trying to generate the required certificates has the OpenSSL libraries installed. Verifying if this and the procedure listed below will vary from the Linux distribution that you're running. This portion has been documented, as done on a CentOS 7 server.

Generate Self Signed RootCA

Step 1. Generate the Private Key for Root CA certificate

Step 2. Generate the CA certificate

Generate a certificate for each service

Create the certificate for Authentication, Console, Disposition, Disposition-Extended, Update server, Firepower Management Center(FMC) service as per the DNS name entry. You need to repeat below certificate generate process for each service (Authentication, Console etc.)

Generate Private key

Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate Pdf

Replace the <example.key> with actual certificate key such as Auth-Cert.key.

Generate CSR

Replace the <example.csr> with actual certificate CSR such as Auth-Cert.csr

Generate Certificate

Replace <example.csr>, <example.crt> with actual certificate CSR and certificate name

Linux Generate Private Key And Certificate Download

Adding The Certificates to AMP VPC

Step 1. Once the certificates are generated from any of the above methods, upload the corresponding certificate for each of the services. If they have been generated correctly, all the check marks are enabled as seen in the image here.

Verify

There is currently no verification procedure available for this configuration.

Troubleshoot

There is currently no specific troubleshooting information available for this configuration.