OpenSSL Viewing Certificates Exported from Firefox

Cryptography Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟OpenSSL Viewing Certificates Exported from Firefox

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use OpenSSL to view contents of a certificate file exported from Firefox.

In the previous tutorial, we successfully exported the certificate from "VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority" to a DER file, \verisign3.crt. Now I want to view its contents with OpenSSL.

herong> openssl x509 -in \verisign3.crt -inform PEM -noout -text
Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 1 (0x0)
        Serial Number:
            3c:91:31:cb:1f:f6:d0:1b:0e:9a:b8:d0:44:bf:12:be
        Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: C=US, O=VeriSign, Inc., OU=Class 3 Public Primary ...
Authority
        Validity
            Not Before: Jan 29 00:00:00 1996 GMT
            Not After : Aug  2 23:59:59 2028 GMT
        Subject: C=US, O=VeriSign, Inc., OU=Class 3 Public Primary...
 Authority
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
            RSA Public Key: (1024 bit)
                Modulus (1024 bit):
                    00:c9:5c:59:9e:f2:1b:8a:01:14:b4:10:df:04:40:
                    db:e3:57:af:6a:45:40:8f:84:0c:0b:d1:33:d9:d9:
                    11:cf:ee:02:58:1f:25:f7:2a:a8:44:05:aa:ec:03:
                    1f:78:7f:9e:93:b9:9a:00:aa:23:7d:d6:ac:85:a2:
                    63:45:c7:72:27:cc:f4:4c:c6:75:71:d2:39:ef:4f:
                    42:f0:75:df:0a:90:c6:8e:20:6f:98:0f:f8:ac:23:
                    5f:70:29:36:a4:c9:86:e7:b1:9a:20:cb:53:a5:85:
                    e7:3d:be:7d:9a:fe:24:45:33:dc:76:15:ed:0f:a2:
                    71:64:4c:65:2e:81:68:45:a7
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
    Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption
        10:72:52:a9:05:14:19:32:08:41:f0:c5:6b:0a:cc:7e:0f:21:
        19:cd:e4:67:dc:5f:a9:1b:e6:ca:e8:73:9d:22:d8:98:6e:73:
        03:61:91:c5:7c:b0:45:40:6e:44:9d:8d:b0:b1:96:74:61:2d:
        0d:a9:45:d2:a4:92:2a:d6:9a:75:97:6e:3f:53:fd:45:99:60:
        1d:a8:2b:4c:f9:5e:a7:09:d8:75:30:d7:d2:65:60:3d:67:d6:
        48:55:75:69:3f:91:f5:48:0b:47:69:22:69:82:96:be:c9:c8:
        38:86:4a:7a:2c:73:19:48:69:4e:6b:7c:65:bf:0f:fc:70:ce:
        88:90

Very nice.

This is a self-signed certificate from VeriSign Inc., valid until year 2028.
The certificate file format is PEM, not DER. You need to use "-inform PEM" with the OpenSSL command.