Openssl view crt file

In this tutorial I will share openssl commands to view the content of different types of certificates such as

• Certificate Signing Request (CSR)
• Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificate
• server or client certificate
• Certificate Authority (CA)

 

View the content of Private Key

We generate a private key with encryption using following command which will prompt for passphrase:

~]# openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096

To view the content of this private key we will use following syntax:

~]# openssl rsa -noout -text -in <PRIVATE_KEY>

So in our case the command would be:

~]# openssl rsa -noout -text -in ca.key

Sample output from my terminal (output is trimmed):

 

View the content of CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

We can use the following command to generate a CSR using the key we created in the previous example:

~]# openssl req -new -key ca.key -out client.csr

Syntax to view the content of this CSR:

~]# openssl req -noout -text -in <CSR_FILE>

Sample output from my terminal:

 

View

openssl show private key

openssl show csr