README

CLCA command line CA script
Copyright (c) 2004 - 2013 Martin Bartosch, Cynops GmbH <m.bartosch@cynops.de>

This software is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
accompanying LICENSE file for more details.



This is a collection of simple tools that allow for basic PKI 
operations such as Sub CA certificate issuance (signing certificate 
requests), certificate revocation and CRL issuance.
The script was originally designed to be used for a Root CA, but may 
also be used for lower level CAs as well.

Private key operations can either be performed in software only
(via OpenSSL) or in software with private key operations on an
HSM. Currently only the nCipher nFast module is supported.

Please note that this script does not support concurrent use of 
multiple sessions. Unpredictable behaviour must be expected if two 
instances of the CA script are run concurrently.


Quick start: CA creation
========================

You can handle an arbitrary number of CA instances using this script.

* For each CA create a new top level directory and change into this
  directory. Within this directory create an 'etc' directory and copy
  the contents of the sample etc directory from the CLCA distribution.

* Modify CA configuration etc/clca.cfg to reflect your needs. Set
  ENGINE as required for HSM or software CA support.

* Modify etc/openssl.cnf according to your CA policy and certificate
  profile (see "Configuration")

* Create root key (see "Root key generation")

* Create self-signed CA certificate    OR
* Create CA certificate request, export it to higher level CA and import
  the certified CA certificate




Root key generation
===================

Only required for nCipher HSM support:
- Install nCipher module and software.
- Create a Security World
- Create an administrator card set
- Create an operator card set that protects your root key
- Create a root key using 'generatekey2 hwcrhk'

Only required for software CA support:
- create a 'private' directory in $CA_HOME
- adapt the RSA key name in clca.cfg
- run openssl genrsa -des3 $CA_HOME/private/<keyname>



Configuration
=============

- Edit etc/clca.cfg and etc/openssl.cnf to reflect your needs, 
  particularly certificate profile and other policy settings.

Please note that CA initialization takes care of setting the 
proper paths in openssl.cnf, so no manual modification is 
needed for this section.


Basic usage and getting help
============================

The CA system is contained in one single script (bin/ca). If
called without arguments it prints an overview on the supported
commands. In order to get online help about a certain command use

$ clca help <command>



PIN entry
=========

If a HSM is used the PIN entry is usually handled by a preload command
that calls OpenSSL in turn. Thus the configuration variable HSM_PRELOAD
must set to the appropriate executable that allows to open the HSM
for private key operations.


CA initialization
=================

Before the system an be used the CA must be created. This is necessary
only once.

For initial setup of a new CA the necessary steps are:

- Verify if the etc/clca.cfg and etc/openssl.cnf settings are OK.

- Run
  $ clca initialize
  The script performes several sanity checks and refuses to overwrite
  an existing CA. If the CA certificates have been manually removed
  from the ca/ directory the existing CA is automatically backed up
  to the directory attic/ and a new CA is created.

  Unless you are using a HSM you will be prompted to enter 
  the PINs protecting the CA private key during the creation of the CA.

  Once a CA has been set up, be sure to backup the CA key and the
  certificate database. If the key is lost no new certificates or CRLs
  can be issued.



Signing certificate requests
============================

Call

$ clca certify <request file>

in order to certify a PKCS #10 request. The request format (DER/PEM)
is automatically detected.

The resulting certificate is placed in the certs/ directory. A copy
of the most current certificate is also written to newcert.pem in the
current working directory.


Revoking certificates
=====================

In order to revoke a certificate call

$ clca revoke <serial number>

This will identify the certificate in the certificate database (certs/
directory) and mark the certificate as revoked.


Listing certificates
====================

Calling 

$ clca list <filter>

lists all certificates matching the specified filter. Filter may
be empty or either 'valid' or 'revoked'.
If no filter is specified, all certificates are printed to standard out,


Issuing CRLs
============

For creating a new CRL run

$ clca issue_crl

This will create a new CRL and write it to the directory 
crls/YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.crl. (The capital letters are replaced with
the current time stamp.)



Checking software integrity
===========================

Integrity checks of the configuration and all required external programs
can be performed by running

$ clca check

This command will report individual check sums for the configuration
files and one compound checksum over all external UNIX utilities
used by the script.

A trusted md5sum program is required for this to work. In addition,
the ca script itself must be checked e. g. using the md5sum program
to ensure that it is not tampered with.



Creating CA backups
===================

At any time it is possible to create a snapshot of the current CA status,
including the certificate database, revocation state and all related
data (including private keys if no HSM is used).

To create such a backup simply run

$ clca backup [filename]

This will create a gzip compressed tar backup in the current directory
named YYYYMMDDHHMMSS-ca-backup.tar.gz if no filename is specified,
otherwise it will create the specified file.

This backup contains all information to recover the CA to the 
state it was in when the backup command was run. To recover to this
point simply erase the $CA_HOME directory and extract the desired
backup archive. This will restore configuration file, ca executable
and certificate database.