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OPENSSL-PKCS12(1SSL) OpenSSL OPENSSL-PKCS12(1SSL)
NAME
openssl-pkcs12 - PKCS#12 file command
SYNOPSIS
openssl pkcs12 [-help] [-passin arg] [-passout arg] [-password arg] [-twopass] [-in
filename|uri] [-out filename] [-nokeys] [-nocerts] [-noout] [-legacy] [-engine id]
[-provider name] [-provider-path path] [-propquery propq] [-rand files] [-writerand file]
PKCS#12 input (parsing) options: [-info] [-nomacver] [-clcerts] [-cacerts]
[-aes128] [-aes192] [-aes256] [-aria128] [-aria192] [-aria256] [-camellia128]
[-camellia192] [-camellia256] [-des] [-des3] [-idea] [-noenc] [-nodes]
PKCS#12 output (export) options:
[-export] [-inkey filename|uri] [-certfile filename] [-passcerts arg] [-chain] [-untrusted
filename] [-CAfile file] [-no-CAfile] [-CApath dir] [-no-CApath] [-CAstore uri]
[-no-CAstore] [-name name] [-caname name] [-CSP name] [-LMK] [-keyex] [-keysig] [-keypbe
cipher] [-certpbe cipher] [-descert] [-macalg digest] [-iter count] [-noiter] [-nomaciter]
[-maciter] [-nomac]
DESCRIPTION
This command allows PKCS#12 files (sometimes referred to as PFX files) to be created and
parsed. PKCS#12 files are used by several programs including Netscape, MSIE and MS
Outlook.
OPTIONS
There are a lot of options the meaning of some depends of whether a PKCS#12 file is being
created or parsed. By default a PKCS#12 file is parsed. A PKCS#12 file can be created by
using the -export option (see below). The PKCS#12 export encryption and MAC options such
as -certpbe and -iter and many further options such as -chain are relevant only with
-export. Conversely, the options regarding encryption of private keys when outputting
PKCS#12 input are relevant only when the -export option is not given.
The default encryption algorithm is AES-256-CBC with PBKDF2 for key derivation.
When encountering problems loading legacy PKCS#12 files that involve, for example,
RC2-40-CBC, try using the -legacy option and, if needed, the -provider-path option.
-help
Print out a usage message.
-passin arg
The password source for the input, and for encrypting any private keys that are
output. For more information about the format of arg see
openssl-passphrase-options(1).
-passout arg
The password source for output files.
-password arg
With -export, -password is equivalent to -passout, otherwise it is equivalent to
-passin.
-twopass
Prompt for separate integrity and encryption passwords: most software always assumes
these are the same so this option will render such PKCS#12 files unreadable. Cannot be
used in combination with the options -password, -passin if importing from PKCS#12, or
-passout if exporting.
-nokeys
No private keys will be output.
-nocerts
No certificates will be output.
-noout
This option inhibits all credentials output, and so the input is just verified.
-legacy
Use legacy mode of operation and automatically load the legacy provider. If OpenSSL
is not installed system-wide, it is necessary to also use, for example,
"-provider-path ./providers" or to set the environment variable OPENSSL_MODULES to
point to the directory where the providers can be found.
In the legacy mode, the default algorithm for certificate encryption is RC2_CBC or
3DES_CBC depending on whether the RC2 cipher is enabled in the build. The default
algorithm for private key encryption is 3DES_CBC. If the legacy option is not
specified, then the legacy provider is not loaded and the default encryption algorithm
for both certificates and private keys is AES_256_CBC with PBKDF2 for key derivation.
-engine id
See "Engine Options" in openssl(1). This option is deprecated.
-provider name
-provider-path path
-propquery propq
See "Provider Options" in openssl(1), provider(7), and property(7).
-rand files, -writerand file
See "Random State Options" in openssl(1) for details.
PKCS#12 input (parsing) options
-in filename|uri
This specifies the input filename or URI. Standard input is used by default. Without
the -export option this must be PKCS#12 file to be parsed. For use with the -export
option see the "PKCS#12 output (export) options" section.
-out filename
The filename to write certificates and private keys to, standard output by default.
They are all written in PEM format.
-info
Output additional information about the PKCS#12 file structure, algorithms used and
iteration counts.
-nomacver
Don't attempt to verify the integrity MAC.
-clcerts
Only output client certificates (not CA certificates).
-cacerts
Only output CA certificates (not client certificates).
-aes128, -aes192, -aes256
Use AES to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-aria128, -aria192, -aria256
Use ARIA to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-camellia128, -camellia192, -camellia256
Use Camellia to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-des
Use DES to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-des3
Use triple DES to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-idea
Use IDEA to encrypt private keys before outputting.
-noenc
Don't encrypt private keys at all.
-nodes
This option is deprecated since OpenSSL 3.0; use -noenc instead.
PKCS#12 output (export) options
-export
This option specifies that a PKCS#12 file will be created rather than parsed.
-out filename
This specifies filename to write the PKCS#12 file to. Standard output is used by
default.
-in filename|uri
This specifies the input filename or URI. Standard input is used by default. With
the -export option this is a file with certificates and a key, or a URI that refers to
a key accessed via an engine. The order of credentials in a file doesn't matter but
one private key and its corresponding certificate should be present. If additional
certificates are present they will also be included in the PKCS#12 output file.
-inkey filename|uri
The private key input for PKCS12 output. If this option is not specified then the
input file (-in argument) must contain a private key. If no engine is used, the
argument is taken as a file. If the -engine option is used or the URI has prefix
"org.openssl.engine:" then the rest of the URI is taken as key identifier for the
given engine.
-certfile filename
An input file with extra certificates to be added to the PKCS#12 output if the -export
option is given.
-passcerts arg
The password source for certificate input such as -certfile and -untrusted. For more
information about the format of arg see openssl-passphrase-options(1).
-chain
If this option is present then the certificate chain of the end entity certificate is
built and included in the PKCS#12 output file. The end entity certificate is the
first one read from the -in file if no key is given, else the first certificate
matching the given key. The standard CA trust store is used for chain building, as
well as any untrusted CA certificates given with the -untrusted option.
-untrusted filename
An input file of untrusted certificates that may be used for chain building, which is
relevant only when a PKCS#12 file is created with the -export option and the -chain
option is given as well. Any certificates that are actually part of the chain are
added to the output.
-CAfile file, -no-CAfile, -CApath dir, -no-CApath, -CAstore uri, -no-CAstore
See "Trusted Certificate Options" in openssl-verification-options(1) for details.
-name friendlyname
This specifies the "friendly name" for the certificates and private key. This name is
typically displayed in list boxes by software importing the file.
-caname friendlyname
This specifies the "friendly name" for other certificates. This option may be used
multiple times to specify names for all certificates in the order they appear.
Netscape ignores friendly names on other certificates whereas MSIE displays them.
-CSP name
Write name as a Microsoft CSP name. The password source for the input, and for
encrypting any private keys that are output. For more information about the format of
arg see openssl-passphrase-options(1).
-LMK
Add the "Local Key Set" identifier to the attributes.
-keyex|-keysig
Specifies that the private key is to be used for key exchange or just signing. This
option is only interpreted by MSIE and similar MS software. Normally "export grade"
software will only allow 512 bit RSA keys to be used for encryption purposes but
arbitrary length keys for signing. The -keysig option marks the key for signing only.
Signing only keys can be used for S/MIME signing, authenticode (ActiveX control
signing) and SSL client authentication, however, due to a bug only MSIE 5.0 and later
support the use of signing only keys for SSL client authentication.
-keypbe alg, -certpbe alg
These options allow the algorithm used to encrypt the private key and certificates to
be selected. Any PKCS#5 v1.5 or PKCS#12 PBE algorithm name can be used (see "NOTES"
section for more information). If a cipher name (as output by "openssl list
-cipher-algorithms") is specified then it is used with PKCS#5 v2.0. For
interoperability reasons it is advisable to only use PKCS#12 algorithms.
Special value "NONE" disables encryption of the private key and certificates.
-descert
Encrypt the certificates using triple DES. By default the private key and the
certificates are encrypted using AES-256-CBC unless the '-legacy' option is used. If
'-descert' is used with the '-legacy' then both, the private key and the certificates
are encrypted using triple DES.
-macalg digest
Specify the MAC digest algorithm. If not included SHA1 will be used.
-iter count
This option specifies the iteration count for the encryption key and MAC. The default
value is 2048.
To discourage attacks by using large dictionaries of common passwords the algorithm
that derives keys from passwords can have an iteration count applied to it: this
causes a certain part of the algorithm to be repeated and slows it down. The MAC is
used to check the file integrity but since it will normally have the same password as
the keys and certificates it could also be attacked.
-noiter, -nomaciter
By default both encryption and MAC iteration counts are set to 2048, using these
options the MAC and encryption iteration counts can be set to 1, since this reduces
the file security you should not use these options unless you really have to. Most
software supports both MAC and encryption iteration counts. MSIE 4.0 doesn't support
MAC iteration counts so it needs the -nomaciter option.
-maciter
This option is included for compatibility with previous versions, it used to be needed
to use MAC iterations counts but they are now used by default.
-nomac
Do not attempt to provide the MAC integrity. This can be useful with the FIPS provider
as the PKCS12 MAC requires PKCS12KDF which is not an approved FIPS algorithm and
cannot be supported by the FIPS provider.
NOTES
Although there are a large number of options most of them are very rarely used. For
PKCS#12 file parsing only -in and -out need to be used for PKCS#12 file creation -export
and -name are also used.
If none of the -clcerts, -cacerts or -nocerts options are present then all certificates
will be output in the order they appear in the input PKCS#12 files. There is no guarantee
that the first certificate present is the one corresponding to the private key. Certain
software which tries to get a private key and the corresponding certificate might assume
that the first certificate in the file is the one corresponding to the private key, but
that may not always be the case. Using the -clcerts option will solve this problem by
only outputting the certificate corresponding to the private key. If the CA certificates
are required then they can be output to a separate file using the -nokeys -cacerts options
to just output CA certificates.
The -keypbe and -certpbe algorithms allow the precise encryption algorithms for private
keys and certificates to be specified. Normally the defaults are fine but occasionally
software can't handle triple DES encrypted private keys, then the option -keypbe
PBE-SHA1-RC2-40 can be used to reduce the private key encryption to 40 bit RC2. A complete
description of all algorithms is contained in openssl-pkcs8(1).
Prior 1.1 release passwords containing non-ASCII characters were encoded in non-compliant
manner, which limited interoperability, in first hand with Windows. But switching to
standard-compliant password encoding poses problem accessing old data protected with
broken encoding. For this reason even legacy encodings is attempted when reading the data.
If you use PKCS#12 files in production application you are advised to convert the data,
because implemented heuristic approach is not MT-safe, its sole goal is to facilitate the
data upgrade with this command.
EXAMPLES
Parse a PKCS#12 file and output it to a PEM file:
openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -out file.pem
Output only client certificates to a file:
openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -clcerts -out file.pem
Don't encrypt the private key:
openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -out file.pem -noenc
Print some info about a PKCS#12 file:
openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -info -noout
Print some info about a PKCS#12 file in legacy mode:
openssl pkcs12 -in file.p12 -info -noout -legacy
Create a PKCS#12 file from a PEM file that may contain a key and certificates:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in file.pem -out file.p12 -name "My PSE"
Include some extra certificates:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in file.pem -out file.p12 -name "My PSE" \
-certfile othercerts.pem
Export a PKCS#12 file with data from a certificate PEM file and from a further PEM file
containing a key, with default algorithms as in the legacy provider:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in cert.pem -inkey key.pem -out file.p12 -legacy
SEE ALSO
openssl(1), openssl-pkcs8(1), ossl_store-file(7)
HISTORY
The -engine option was deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0. The -nodes option was deprecated in
OpenSSL 3.0, too; use -noenc instead.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2000-2021 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (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>.
3.0.2 2025-09-18 OPENSSL-PKCS12(1SSL)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-11-21 17:39 @216.73.216.164 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)