Signing certificate request with certificate authority

Question

I want to use TLS mutual authentication to authenticate a client on a API made in go. I've created a certificate authority, and let's say Bob has a key pair he wants to use with the client. Bob created a certificate request and want me to validate his certificate in order to be authorized and authenticated on the API.

I've used this to create my Certificate Authority :

openssl genrsa -aes256 -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -sha256 -days 730 -key ca.key -out ca.crt

Bob used this to create his certificate and certificate request :

openssl genrsa -out bob.key 4096
openssl req -new -key bob.key -out bob.csr

I want to achive this, but in go :

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -sha256 -in bob.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 3 -out bob.crt

For now, with theses commands, Bob can create a TLS connection to my API which use this tls.Config :

func createTLSConfig(certFile string, keyFile string, clientCAFilepath string) (config *tls.Config, err error) {
    cer, err := tls.LoadX509KeyPair(certFile, keyFile)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    clientCAFile, err := ioutil.ReadFile(clientCAFilepath)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }
    clientCAPool := x509.NewCertPool()
    clientCAPool.AppendCertsFromPEM(clientCAFile)

    config = &tls.Config{
        Certificates: []tls.Certificate{cer},
        ClientAuth: tls.RequireAndVerifyClientCert,
        ClientCAs:  clientCAPool,
        CipherSuites: []uint16{
            tls.TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,
            tls.TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,
        },
        PreferServerCipherSuites: true,
        SessionTicketsDisabled:   false,
        MinVersion:               tls.VersionTLS12,
        CurvePreferences:         []tls.CurveID{tls.CurveP521, tls.CurveP384},
    }

    return config, nil
}

But what if Julia now want to login ? She will have to create a CSR, send it to me and I would have to manually validate her CSR to a CRT too. To avoid this manual operation, the idea is to have a register endpoint where Julia can submit her CSR and get back a valid CRT. The endpoint will basically look like this :

func Register(c echo.Context) (err error) {
    // get Julia's csr from POST body
    csr := certificateFromBody(c.Body)

    // valid csr with ca to generate the crt
    crt := signCSR(csr, config.ClientCAPath)

    // return the crt to julia
    return c.JSON(http.StatusCreated, base64.StdEncoding.EncodeToString(crt))
}

I spend some time to understand how openssl use the CA to create the CRT from the CRS, without success.

Golang has a CertificateRequest object from the crypto/x509 package that I can create with the ParseCertificateRequest but I can't find the function that take this object and my CA and return a certificate.

Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

It work now, here is a basic solution to validate a CSR from a CRT with a CA:

• load ca certificate
• load ca private key (with password)
• load bob CSR
• create a certificate template with the CSR and CA informations
• generate the certificate from the template and with the CA private key
• save the bob's certificate

A working example:

package main

import (
    "crypto/rand"
    "crypto/x509"
    "encoding/pem"
    "io/ioutil"
    "math/big"
    "os"
    "time"
)

func crsToCrtExample() {
    // load CA key pair
    //      public key
    caPublicKeyFile, err := ioutil.ReadFile("certs/ca-root.crt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    pemBlock, _ := pem.Decode(caPublicKeyFile)
    if pemBlock == nil {
        panic("pem.Decode failed")
    }
    caCRT, err := x509.ParseCertificate(pemBlock.Bytes)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    //      private key
    caPrivateKeyFile, err := ioutil.ReadFile("certs/ca-mutu.key")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    pemBlock, _ = pem.Decode(caPrivateKeyFile)
    if pemBlock == nil {
        panic("pem.Decode failed")
    }
    der, err := x509.DecryptPEMBlock(pemBlock, []byte("ca private key password"))
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    caPrivateKey, err := x509.ParsePKCS1PrivateKey(der)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    // load client certificate request
    clientCSRFile, err := ioutil.ReadFile("certs/bob.csr")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    pemBlock, _ = pem.Decode(clientCSRFile)
    if pemBlock == nil {
        panic("pem.Decode failed")
    }
    clientCSR, err := x509.ParseCertificateRequest(pemBlock.Bytes)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    if err = clientCSR.CheckSignature(); err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    // create client certificate template
    clientCRTTemplate := x509.Certificate{
        Signature:          clientCSR.Signature,
        SignatureAlgorithm: clientCSR.SignatureAlgorithm,

        PublicKeyAlgorithm: clientCSR.PublicKeyAlgorithm,
        PublicKey:          clientCSR.PublicKey,

        SerialNumber: big.NewInt(2),
        Issuer:       caCRT.Subject,
        Subject:      clientCSR.Subject,
        NotBefore:    time.Now(),
        NotAfter:     time.Now().Add(24 * time.Hour),
        KeyUsage:     x509.KeyUsageDigitalSignature,
        ExtKeyUsage:  []x509.ExtKeyUsage{x509.ExtKeyUsageClientAuth},
    }

    // create client certificate from template and CA public key
    clientCRTRaw, err := x509.CreateCertificate(rand.Reader, &clientCRTTemplate, caCRT, clientCSR.PublicKey, caPrivateKey)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    // save the certificate
    clientCRTFile, err := os.Create("certs/bob.crt")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    pem.Encode(clientCRTFile, &pem.Block{Type: "CERTIFICATE", Bytes: clientCRTRaw})
    clientCRTFile.Close()
}

Thanks Mark!