1OCSP(1) OpenSSL OCSP(1)
2
6 ocsp - Online Certificate Status Protocol utility
7
9 openssl ocsp [-out file] [-issuer file] [-cert file] [-serial n]
10 [-signer file] [-signkey file] [-sign_other file] [-no_certs]
11 [-req_text] [-resp_text] [-text] [-reqout file] [-respout file] [-reqin
12 file] [-respin file] [-nonce] [-no_nonce] [-url URL] [-host host:n]
13 [-header name value] [-path] [-CApath dir] [-CAfile file]
14 [-trusted_first] [-no_alt_chains] [-VAfile file] [-validity_period n]
15 [-status_age n] [-noverify] [-verify_other file] [-trust_other]
16 [-no_intern] [-no_signature_verify] [-no_cert_verify] [-no_chain]
17 [-no_cert_checks] [-no_explicit] [-port num] [-index file] [-CA file]
18 [-rsigner file] [-rkey file] [-rother file] [-resp_no_certs] [-nmin n]
19 [-ndays n] [-resp_key_id] [-nrequest n] [-md5|-sha1|...]
20
22 The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) enables applications to
23 determine the (revocation) state of an identified certificate (RFC
24 2560).
25 The ocsp command performs many common OCSP tasks. It can be used to
27 print out requests and responses, create requests and send queries to
28 an OCSP responder and behave like a mini OCSP server itself.
29
31 -out filename
32 specify output filename, default is standard output.
33 -issuer filename
35 This specifies the current issuer certificate. This option can be
36 used multiple times. The certificate specified in filename must be
37 in PEM format. This option MUST come before any -cert options.
38 -cert filename
40 Add the certificate filename to the request. The issuer certificate
41 is taken from the previous issuer option, or an error occurs if no
42 issuer certificate is specified.
43 -serial num
45 Same as the cert option except the certificate with serial number
46 num is added to the request. The serial number is interpreted as a
47 decimal integer unless preceded by 0x. Negative integers can also
48 be specified by preceding the value by a - sign.
49 -signer filename, -signkey filename
51 Sign the OCSP request using the certificate specified in the signer
52 option and the private key specified by the signkey option. If the
53 signkey option is not present then the private key is read from the
54 same file as the certificate. If neither option is specified then
55 the OCSP request is not signed.
56 -sign_other filename
58 Additional certificates to include in the signed request.
59 -nonce, -no_nonce
61 Add an OCSP nonce extension to a request or disable OCSP nonce
62 addition. Normally if an OCSP request is input using the respin
63 option no nonce is added: using the nonce option will force
64 addition of a nonce. If an OCSP request is being created (using
65 cert and serial options) a nonce is automatically added specifying
66 no_nonce overrides this.
67 -req_text, -resp_text, -text
69 print out the text form of the OCSP request, response or both
70 respectively.
71 -reqout file, -respout file
73 write out the DER encoded certificate request or response to file.
74 -reqin file, -respin file
76 read OCSP request or response file from file. These option are
77 ignored if OCSP request or response creation is implied by other
78 options (for example with serial, cert and host options).
79 -url responder_url
81 specify the responder URL. Both HTTP and HTTPS (SSL/TLS) URLs can
82 be specified.
83 -host hostname:port, -path pathname
85 if the host option is present then the OCSP request is sent to the
86 host hostname on port port. path specifies the HTTP path name to
87 use or "/" by default.
88 -header name value
90 If sending a request to an OCSP server, then the specified header
91 name and value are added to the HTTP request. Note that the name
92 and value must be specified as two separate parameters, not as a
93 single quoted string, and that the header name does not have the
94 trailing colon. Some OCSP responders require a Host header; use
95 this flag to provide it.
96 -timeout seconds
98 connection timeout to the OCSP responder in seconds
99 -CAfile file, -CApath pathname
101 file or pathname containing trusted CA certificates. These are used
102 to verify the signature on the OCSP response.
103 -trusted_first
105 Use certificates in CA file or CA directory over certificates
106 provided in the response or residing in other certificates file
107 when building the trust chain to verify responder certificate.
108 This is mainly useful in environments with Bridge CA or Cross-
109 Certified CAs.
110 -no_alt_chains
112 See verify manual page for details.
113 -verify_other file
115 file containing additional certificates to search when attempting
116 to locate the OCSP response signing certificate. Some responders
117 omit the actual signer's certificate from the response: this option
118 can be used to supply the necessary certificate in such cases.
119 -trust_other
121 the certificates specified by the -verify_other option should be
122 explicitly trusted and no additional checks will be performed on
123 them. This is useful when the complete responder certificate chain
124 is not available or trusting a root CA is not appropriate.
125 -VAfile file
127 file containing explicitly trusted responder certificates.
128 Equivalent to the -verify_other and -trust_other options.
129 -noverify
131 don't attempt to verify the OCSP response signature or the nonce
132 values. This option will normally only be used for debugging since
133 it disables all verification of the responders certificate.
134 -no_intern
136 ignore certificates contained in the OCSP response when searching
137 for the signers certificate. With this option the signers
138 certificate must be specified with either the -verify_other or
139 -VAfile options.
140 -no_signature_verify
142 don't check the signature on the OCSP response. Since this option
143 tolerates invalid signatures on OCSP responses it will normally
144 only be used for testing purposes.
145 -no_cert_verify
147 don't verify the OCSP response signers certificate at all. Since
148 this option allows the OCSP response to be signed by any
149 certificate it should only be used for testing purposes.
150 -no_chain
152 do not use certificates in the response as additional untrusted CA
153 certificates.
154 -no_explicit
156 do not explicitly trust the root CA if it is set to be trusted for
157 OCSP signing.
158 -no_cert_checks
160 don't perform any additional checks on the OCSP response signers
161 certificate. That is do not make any checks to see if the signers
162 certificate is authorised to provide the necessary status
163 information: as a result this option should only be used for
164 testing purposes.
165 -validity_period nsec, -status_age age
167 these options specify the range of times, in seconds, which will be
168 tolerated in an OCSP response. Each certificate status response
169 includes a notBefore time and an optional notAfter time. The
170 current time should fall between these two values, but the interval
171 between the two times may be only a few seconds. In practice the
172 OCSP responder and clients clocks may not be precisely synchronised
173 and so such a check may fail. To avoid this the -validity_period
174 option can be used to specify an acceptable error range in seconds,
175 the default value is 5 minutes.
176 If the notAfter time is omitted from a response then this means
178 that new status information is immediately available. In this case
179 the age of the notBefore field is checked to see it is not older
180 than age seconds old. By default this additional check is not
181 performed.
182 -md5|-sha1|-sha256|-ripemod160|...
184 this option sets digest algorithm to use for certificate
185 identification in the OCSP request. By default SHA-1 is used. See
186 openssl dgst -h output for the list of available algorithms.
187
189 -index indexfile
190 indexfile is a text index file in ca format containing certificate
191 revocation information.
192 If the index option is specified the ocsp utility is in responder
194 mode, otherwise it is in client mode. The request(s) the responder
195 processes can be either specified on the command line (using issuer
196 and serial options), supplied in a file (using the respin option)
197 or via external OCSP clients (if port or url is specified).
198 If the index option is present then the CA and rsigner options must
200 also be present.
201 -CA file
203 CA certificate corresponding to the revocation information in
204 indexfile.
205 -rsigner file
207 The certificate to sign OCSP responses with.
208 -rother file
210 Additional certificates to include in the OCSP response.
211 -resp_no_certs
213 Don't include any certificates in the OCSP response.
214 -resp_key_id
216 Identify the signer certificate using the key ID, default is to use
217 the subject name.
218 -rkey file
220 The private key to sign OCSP responses with: if not present the
221 file specified in the rsigner option is used.
222 -port portnum
224 Port to listen for OCSP requests on. The port may also be specified
225 using the url option.
226 -nrequest number
228 The OCSP server will exit after receiving number requests, default
229 unlimited.
230 -nmin minutes, -ndays days
232 Number of minutes or days when fresh revocation information is
233 available: used in the nextUpdate field. If neither option is
234 present then the nextUpdate field is omitted meaning fresh
235 revocation information is immediately available.
236
238 OCSP Response follows the rules specified in RFC2560.
239 Initially the OCSP responder certificate is located and the signature
241 on the OCSP request checked using the responder certificate's public
242 key.
243 Then a normal certificate verify is performed on the OCSP responder
245 certificate building up a certificate chain in the process. The
246 locations of the trusted certificates used to build the chain can be
247 specified by the CAfile and CApath options or they will be looked for
248 in the standard OpenSSL certificates directory.
249 If the initial verify fails then the OCSP verify process halts with an
251 error.
252 Otherwise the issuing CA certificate in the request is compared to the
254 OCSP responder certificate: if there is a match then the OCSP verify
255 succeeds.
256 Otherwise the OCSP responder certificate's CA is checked against the
258 issuing CA certificate in the request. If there is a match and the
259 OCSPSigning extended key usage is present in the OCSP responder
260 certificate then the OCSP verify succeeds.
261 Otherwise, if -no_explicit is not set the root CA of the OCSP
263 responders CA is checked to see if it is trusted for OCSP signing. If
264 it is the OCSP verify succeeds.
265 If none of these checks is successful then the OCSP verify fails.
267 What this effectively means if that if the OCSP responder certificate
269 is authorised directly by the CA it is issuing revocation information
270 about (and it is correctly configured) then verification will succeed.
271 If the OCSP responder is a "global responder" which can give details
273 about multiple CAs and has its own separate certificate chain then its
274 root CA can be trusted for OCSP signing. For example:
275 openssl x509 -in ocspCA.pem -addtrust OCSPSigning -out trustedCA.pem
277 Alternatively the responder certificate itself can be explicitly
279 trusted with the -VAfile option.
280
282 As noted, most of the verify options are for testing or debugging
283 purposes. Normally only the -CApath, -CAfile and (if the responder is
284 a 'global VA') -VAfile options need to be used.
285 The OCSP server is only useful for test and demonstration purposes: it
287 is not really usable as a full OCSP responder. It contains only a very
288 simple HTTP request handling and can only handle the POST form of OCSP
289 queries. It also handles requests serially meaning it cannot respond to
290 new requests until it has processed the current one. The text index
291 file format of revocation is also inefficient for large quantities of
292 revocation data.
293 It is possible to run the ocsp application in responder mode via a CGI
295 script using the respin and respout options.
296
298 Create an OCSP request and write it to a file:
299 openssl ocsp -issuer issuer.pem -cert c1.pem -cert c2.pem -reqout req.der
301 Send a query to an OCSP responder with URL http://ocsp.myhost.com/ save
303 the response to a file and print it out in text form
304 openssl ocsp -issuer issuer.pem -cert c1.pem -cert c2.pem \
306 -url http://ocsp.myhost.com/ -resp_text -respout resp.der
307 Read in an OCSP response and print out text form:
309 openssl ocsp -respin resp.der -text
311 OCSP server on port 8888 using a standard ca configuration, and a
313 separate responder certificate. All requests and responses are printed
314 to a file.
315 openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -port 8888 -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
317 -text -out log.txt
318 As above but exit after processing one request:
320 openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -port 8888 -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
322 -nrequest 1
323 Query status information using internally generated request:
325 openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
327 -issuer demoCA/cacert.pem -serial 1
328 Query status information using request read from a file, write response
330 to a second file.
331 openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
333 -reqin req.der -respout resp.der
334
336 The -no_alt_chains options was first added to OpenSSL 1.0.2b.
3371.0.2k 2019-03-12 OCSP(1)