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CA certificate management

Introduction

What is a digital certificate?

The digital certificate is an electronic document that uniquely associates the identity of a subject (natural person, legal entity, or web service) with a public key. Digital certificates are issued by a Certification Authority (also known as CA), which is an entity that is authorized and recognized as “trusted” by the parties involved.

The digital certificate contains information about the key, information about the identity of the owner (called the subject), and the digital signature of an entity that verified the contents of the certificate (called the issuer). If the signature is valid and the software that examines the certificate trusts the issuer, it can use this key to communicate securely with the subject of the certificate.

Creating digital certificates from Excel files

Creating an Excel file

Create an Excel sheet that contains all the information you need to create the digital certificate for each user:

  • Common name (CN): required;
  • Organization unit (OU): optional;
  • State name (ST): optional;
  • Organization (O): optional;
  • Email (E): optional;
  • Locality name (L): optional;
  • Country (C): optional;
  • Subject alternative names (SAN): optional.

The CN information must be present, since it is mandatory. However, the Excel file does not need a title for each column, and the information does not need to be in a specific order, because the converter provided asks you to associate each Excel column with one of the attributes listed above (CN, OU, etc.).

Figure 1: Sample Excel file

Converting Excel to JSON

Converter page

In the left side menu, select Tools > Certificates json to open the page where you upload the Excel file you created, in order to convert it to a JSON file.

Figure 2: Excel to JSON conversion page

Clicking the file selection button in the Select file field opens a window where you can upload the Excel file. After that, you are asked to select the sheet to convert from the Select sheet drop-down menu.

Figure 3: Excel sheet selection

After selecting the sheet and clicking Ok, you are prompted to associate each column of the Excel file with the fields that form the digital certificate, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 4: Matcher

You can then save the configuration you just set to a JSON file, with the green Save match button. This way, during a subsequent conversion, you can load the saved configuration from the Excel sheet selection screen (see Figure 3), without having to reselect the sheet and all the column references.

After you click Ok, the Excel file is shown in a table:

Figure 5: Table

In this view, you can delete one row at a time by selecting it and clicking the button.

You can also edit the contents of each cell of the table: just select the row that contains the cell you want to edit and click the button.

A window appears with all the data of the selected row, where you can edit each individual field of the row, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 6: Edit cells of a table row

Once you have checked the information in the table, click the export button to save all the data as a JSON file.

JSON file import

You can import the JSON file exported through the Excel file conversion for the actual creation of the certificates. In the left side menu, select Files > Keystores. A page appears containing the list of all the keystores on the machine. Create a new keystore and access the newly created keystore by typing the password. Click the create-from-file button and import the JSON file by entering the alias password.

Figure 7: Upload JSON file

After you click Confirm, the certificates to be signed are shown in a table.

Figure 8: Certificate table

When you click the keystore signing button , a 4-step wizard appears that asks for a series of information to sign the various certificates.

Step 1

You are prompted for the alias password of the keystore.

Figure 9: Alias password

Step 2

You are prompted to select from the drop-down menu the keystore that contains the CA with which you want to sign the certificates contained in the keystore, and enter the password of the CA keystore.

Figure 10: CA keystore

Step 3

You are prompted to select the CA with which to sign the keystore.

Figure 11: CA selection of the keystore

Step 4

You are prompted for the CA alias password and the number of days the certificates are valid.

Select Renew signing if you want to re-sign all certificates.

Figure 12: Final settings

Click Sign to sign the keystore and its certificates.

Export of the keystore

Once you have signed the keystore, to export all its certificates in zip format, click the export to zip button and enter the keystore password and the alias password. Click Ok to confirm.

Figure 13: Export keystore in zip format

The export produces a zip containing the following information:

  • File with the list of certificates in CSV (separator ;) and JSON format.

  • As many folders as there are certificates in the keystore. Each folder contains:

    • Digital certificate (.p12)

    • Password (.txt)

    • Recipient email details (.txt)

    • The serial number associated with the personal certificate (.txt)

    • EML file to double-click to prepare the pre-filled email with the certificate attached, to be sent to the certificate holder

    • EML file to double-click to prepare the pre-filled email with the password, to be sent to the certificate holder

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