Introduction to OpenSSL, part 1 -- Generating root CA certificate

Dr. Rahul Remanan

CEO, Moad Computer

In this article, the OpenSSL library in linux is used to create a root certificate authority (CA) certificate for a self-signed certificate generation workflow.

Please note that the passwords and the method to pass them to OpenSSL used here are for educational purposes alone. They are very weak and are visible using tools such as ```ps```.

In production, it is very critical to set strong passwords as well as modify the technique used for passing them accordingly.

Create the folder structure for storing the root CA certificate

Create private key for the root CA certificate

Write random bytes to the .rnd file

Generate random bytes with rand and write them to ```.rnd``` file
Note: The location could change depending on the linux environment and the configuration used.

Generate the root CA certificate

The root CA certificate is generated using the pre-generated configuration file (```.ini```).

Appendix

Contents of the configuration file (```.ini```) for creating the root CA certificate.