Manpages - x509.7ssl

x509 - X.509 certificate handling

#include <openssl/x509.h>

An X.509 certificate is a structured grouping of information about an individual, a device, or anything one can imagine. An X.509 CRL (certificate revocation list) is a tool to help determine if a certificate is still valid. The exact definition of those can be found in the X.509 document from ITU-T, or in RFC3280 from PKIX. In OpenSSL, the type X509 is used to express such a certificate, and the type X509_CRL is used to express a CRL.

A related structure is a certificate request, defined in PKCS#10 from RSA Security, Inc, also reflected in RFC2896. In OpenSSL, the type X509_REQ is used to express such a certificate request.

To handle some complex parts of a certificate, there are the types X509_NAME (to express a certificate name), X509_ATTRIBUTE (to express a certificate attribute), X509_EXTENSION (to express a certificate extension) and a few more.

Finally, there’s the supertype X509_INFO, which can contain a CRL, a certificate and a corresponding private key.

*X509_*/XXX/, *d2i_X509_*/XXX/, and *i2d_X509_*/XXX/ functions handle X.509 certificates, with some exceptions, shown below.

*X509_CRL_*/XXX/, *d2i_X509_CRL_*/XXX/, and *i2d_X509_CRL_*/XXX/ functions handle X.509 CRLs.

*X509_REQ_*/XXX/, *d2i_X509_REQ_*/XXX/, and *i2d_X509_REQ_*/XXX/ functions handle PKCS#10 certificate requests.

*X509_NAME_*/XXX/ functions handle certificate names.

*X509_ATTRIBUTE_*/XXX/ functions handle certificate attributes.

*X509_EXTENSION_*/XXX/ functions handle certificate extensions.

X509_NAME_ENTRY_get_object (3), X509_NAME_add_entry_by_txt (3), X509_NAME_add_entry_by_NID (3), X509_NAME_print_ex (3), X509_NAME_new (3), d2i_X509 (3), d2i_X509_ALGOR (3), d2i_X509_CRL (3), d2i_X509_NAME (3), d2i_X509_REQ (3), d2i_X509_SIG (3), X509v3 (3), crypto (7)

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Licensed under the OpenSSL license (the License). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html.