VERIFY(1) OpenSSL VERIFY(1) NNAAMMEE openssl-verify, verify - Utility to verify certificates. SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS ooppeennssssll vveerriiffyy [--CCAAppaatthh ddiirreeccttoorryy] [--CCAAffiillee ffiillee] [--ppuurrppoossee ppuurrppoossee] [--ppoolliiccyy aarrgg] [--iiggnnoorree__ccrriittiiccaall] [--aattttiimmee ttiimmeessttaammpp] [--cchheecckk__ssss__ssiigg] [--CCRRLLffiillee ffiillee] [--ccrrll__ddoowwnnllooaadd] [--ccrrll__cchheecckk] [--ccrrll__cchheecckk__aallll] [--ppooll-- iiccyy__cchheecckk] [--eexxpplliicciitt__ppoolliiccyy] [--iinnhhiibbiitt__aannyy] [--iinnhhiibbiitt__mmaapp] [--xx550099__ssttrriicctt] [--eexxtteennddeedd__ccrrll] [--uussee__ddeellttaass] [--ppoolliiccyy__pprriinntt] [--nnoo__aalltt__cchhaaiinnss] [--aallllooww__pprrooxxyy__cceerrttss] [--uunnttrruusstteedd ffiillee] [--hheellpp] [--iissssuueerr__cchheecckkss] [--ttrruusstteedd ffiillee] [--vveerrbboossee] [--] [certificates] DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN The vveerriiffyy command verifies certificate chains. CCOOMMMMAANNDD OOPPTTIIOONNSS --CCAAppaatthh ddiirreeccttoorryy A directory of trusted certificates. The certificates should have names of the form: hash.0 or have symbolic links to them of this form ("hash" is the hashed certificate subject name: see the --hhaasshh option of the xx550099 utility). Under Unix the cc__rreehhaasshh script will automatically create symbolic links to a directory of certificates. --CCAAffiillee ffiillee A file of trusted certificates. The file should contain multiple certificates in PEM format concatenated together. --aattttiimmee ttiimmeessttaammpp Perform validation checks using time specified by ttiimmeessttaammpp and not current system time. ttiimmeessttaammpp is the number of seconds since 01.01.1970 (UNIX time). --cchheecckk__ssss__ssiigg Verify the signature on the self-signed root CA. This is disabled by default because it doesn't add any security. --CCRRLLffiillee ffiillee File containing one or more CRL's (in PEM format) to load. --ccrrll__ddoowwnnllooaadd Attempt to download CRL information for this certificate. --ccrrll__cchheecckk Checks end entity certificate validity by attempting to look up a valid CRL. If a valid CRL cannot be found an error occurs. --uunnttrruusstteedd ffiillee A file of untrusted certificates. The file should contain multiple certificates in PEM format concatenated together. --ppuurrppoossee ppuurrppoossee The intended use for the certificate. If this option is not speci- fied, vveerriiffyy will not consider certificate purpose during chain verification. Currently accepted uses are ssssllcclliieenntt, ssssllsseerrvveerr, nnssssssllsseerrvveerr, ssmmiimmeessiiggnn, ssmmiimmeeeennccrryypptt. See the VVEERRIIFFYY OOPPEERRAATTIIOONN sec- tion for more information. --hheellpp Print out a usage message. --vveerrbboossee Print extra information about the operations being performed. --iissssuueerr__cchheecckkss Print out diagnostics relating to searches for the issuer certifi- cate of the current certificate. This shows why each candidate issuer certificate was rejected. The presence of rejection messages does not itself imply that anything is wrong; during the normal verification process, several rejections may take place. --ppoolliiccyy aarrgg Enable policy processing and add aarrgg to the user-initial-policy-set (see RFC5280). The policy aarrgg can be an object name an OID in numeric form. This argument can appear more than once. --ppoolliiccyy__cchheecckk Enables certificate policy processing. --eexxpplliicciitt__ppoolliiccyy Set policy variable require-explicit-policy (see RFC5280). --iinnhhiibbiitt__aannyy Set policy variable inhibit-any-policy (see RFC5280). --iinnhhiibbiitt__mmaapp Set policy variable inhibit-policy-mapping (see RFC5280). --nnoo__aalltt__cchhaaiinnss When building a certificate chain, if the first certificate chain found is not trusted, then OpenSSL will continue to check to see if an alternative chain can be found that is trusted. With this option that behaviour is suppressed so that only the first chain found is ever used. Using this option will force the behaviour to match that of previous OpenSSL versions. --aallllooww__pprrooxxyy__cceerrttss Allow the verification of proxy certificates. --ttrruusstteedd ffiillee A file of additional trusted certificates. The file should contain multiple certificates in PEM format concatenated together. --ppoolliiccyy__pprriinntt Print out diagnostics related to policy processing. --ccrrll__cchheecckk Checks end entity certificate validity by attempting to look up a valid CRL. If a valid CRL cannot be found an error occurs. --ccrrll__cchheecckk__aallll Checks the validity of aallll certificates in the chain by attempting to look up valid CRLs. --iiggnnoorree__ccrriittiiccaall Normally if an unhandled critical extension is present which is not supported by OpenSSL the certificate is rejected (as required by RFC5280). If this option is set critical extensions are ignored. --xx550099__ssttrriicctt For strict X.509 compliance, disable non-compliant workarounds for broken certificates. --eexxtteennddeedd__ccrrll Enable extended CRL features such as indirect CRLs and alternate CRL signing keys. --uussee__ddeellttaass Enable support for delta CRLs. --cchheecckk__ssss__ssiigg Verify the signature on the self-signed root CA. This is disabled by default because it doesn't add any security. -- Indicates the last option. All arguments following this are assumed to be certificate files. This is useful if the first certificate filename begins with a --. cceerrttiiffiiccaatteess One or more certificates to verify. If no certificates are given, vveerriiffyy will attempt to read a certificate from standard input. Cer- tificates must be in PEM format. VVEERRIIFFYY OOPPEERRAATTIIOONN The vveerriiffyy program uses the same functions as the internal SSL and S/MIME verification, therefore this description applies to these verify operations too. There is one crucial difference between the verify operations performed by the vveerriiffyy program: wherever possible an attempt is made to continue after an error whereas normally the verify operation would halt on the first error. This allows all the problems with a certificate chain to be determined. The verify operation consists of a number of separate steps. Firstly a certificate chain is built up starting from the supplied cer- tificate and ending in the root CA. It is an error if the whole chain cannot be built up. The chain is built up by looking up the issuers certificate of the current certificate. If a certificate is found which is its own issuer it is assumed to be the root CA. The process of 'looking up the issuers certificate' itself involves a number of steps. In versions of OpenSSL before 0.9.5a the first cer- tificate whose subject name matched the issuer of the current certifi- cate was assumed to be the issuers certificate. In OpenSSL 0.9.6 and later all certificates whose subject name matches the issuer name of the current certificate are subject to further tests. The relevant authority key identifier components of the current certificate (if present) must match the subject key identifier (if present) and issuer and serial number of the candidate issuer, in addition the keyUsage extension of the candidate issuer (if present) must permit certificate signing. The lookup first looks in the list of untrusted certificates and if no match is found the remaining lookups are from the trusted certificates. The root CA is always looked up in the trusted certificate list: if the certificate to verify is a root certificate then an exact match must be found in the trusted list. The second operation is to check every untrusted certificate's exten- sions for consistency with the supplied purpose. If the --ppuurrppoossee option is not included then no checks are done. The supplied or "leaf" cer- tificate must have extensions compatible with the supplied purpose and all other certificates must also be valid CA certificates. The precise extensions required are described in more detail in the CCEERRTTIIFFIICCAATTEE EEXXTTEENNSSIIOONNSS section of the xx550099 utility. The third operation is to check the trust settings on the root CA. The root CA should be trusted for the supplied purpose. For compatibility with previous versions of SSLeay and OpenSSL a certificate with no trust settings is considered to be valid for all purposes. The final operation is to check the validity of the certificate chain. The validity period is checked against the current system time and the notBefore and notAfter dates in the certificate. The certificate signa- tures are also checked at this point. If all operations complete successfully then certificate is considered valid. If any operation fails then the certificate is not valid. DDIIAAGGNNOOSSTTIICCSS When a verify operation fails the output messages can be somewhat cryp- tic. The general form of the error message is: server.pem: /C=AU/ST=Queensland/O=CryptSoft Pty Ltd/CN=Test CA (1024 bit) error 24 at 1 depth lookup:invalid CA certificate The first line contains the name of the certificate being verified fol- lowed by the subject name of the certificate. The second line contains the error number and the depth. The depth is number of the certificate being verified when a problem was detected starting with zero for the certificate being verified itself then 1 for the CA that signed the certificate and so on. Finally a text version of the error number is presented. An exhaustive list of the error codes and messages is shown below, this also includes the name of the error code as defined in the header file x509_vfy.h Some of the error codes are defined but never returned: these are described as "unused". 00 XX550099__VV__OOKK:: ookk the operation was successful. 22 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__GGEETT__IISSSSUUEERR__CCEERRTT:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ggeett iissssuueerr cceerrttiiffii-- ccaattee the issuer certificate of a looked up certificate could not be found. This normally means the list of trusted certificates is not complete. 33 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__GGEETT__CCRRLL:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ggeett cceerrttiiffiiccaattee CCRRLL the CRL of a certificate could not be found. 44 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__DDEECCRRYYPPTT__CCEERRTT__SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ddeeccrryypptt cceerr-- ttiiffiiccaattee''ss ssiiggnnaattuurree the certificate signature could not be decrypted. This means that the actual signature value could not be determined rather than it not matching the expected value, this is only meaningful for RSA keys. 55 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__DDEECCRRYYPPTT__CCRRLL__SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ddeeccrryypptt CCRRLL''ss ssiiggnnaattuurree the CRL signature could not be decrypted: this means that the actual signature value could not be determined rather than it not matching the expected value. Unused. 66 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__DDEECCOODDEE__IISSSSUUEERR__PPUUBBLLIICC__KKEEYY:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ddeeccooddee iissssuueerr ppuubblliicc kkeeyy the public key in the certificate SubjectPublicKeyInfo could not be read. 77 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE__FFAAIILLUURREE:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee ssiiggnnaattuurree ffaaiilluurree the signature of the certificate is invalid. 88 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCRRLL__SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE__FFAAIILLUURREE:: CCRRLL ssiiggnnaattuurree ffaaiilluurree the signature of the certificate is invalid. 99 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__NNOOTT__YYEETT__VVAALLIIDD:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee iiss nnoott yyeett vvaalliidd the certificate is not yet valid: the notBefore date is after the current time. 1100 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__HHAASS__EEXXPPIIRREEDD:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee hhaass eexxppiirreedd the certificate has expired: that is the notAfter date is before the current time. 1111 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCRRLL__NNOOTT__YYEETT__VVAALLIIDD:: CCRRLL iiss nnoott yyeett vvaalliidd the CRL is not yet valid. 1122 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCRRLL__HHAASS__EEXXPPIIRREEDD:: CCRRLL hhaass eexxppiirreedd the CRL has expired. 1133 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__EERRRROORR__IINN__CCEERRTT__NNOOTT__BBEEFFOORREE__FFIIEELLDD:: ffoorrmmaatt eerrrroorr iinn cceerrttiiffii-- ccaattee''ss nnoottBBeeffoorree ffiieelldd the certificate notBefore field contains an invalid time. 1144 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__EERRRROORR__IINN__CCEERRTT__NNOOTT__AAFFTTEERR__FFIIEELLDD:: ffoorrmmaatt eerrrroorr iinn cceerrttiiffii-- ccaattee''ss nnoottAAfftteerr ffiieelldd the certificate notAfter field contains an invalid time. 1155 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__EERRRROORR__IINN__CCRRLL__LLAASSTT__UUPPDDAATTEE__FFIIEELLDD:: ffoorrmmaatt eerrrroorr iinn CCRRLL''ss llaassttUUppddaattee ffiieelldd the CRL lastUpdate field contains an invalid time. 1166 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__EERRRROORR__IINN__CCRRLL__NNEEXXTT__UUPPDDAATTEE__FFIIEELLDD:: ffoorrmmaatt eerrrroorr iinn CCRRLL''ss nneexxttUUppddaattee ffiieelldd the CRL nextUpdate field contains an invalid time. 1177 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__OOUUTT__OOFF__MMEEMM:: oouutt ooff mmeemmoorryy an error occurred trying to allocate memory. This should never hap- pen. 1188 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__DDEEPPTTHH__ZZEERROO__SSEELLFF__SSIIGGNNEEDD__CCEERRTT:: sseellff ssiiggnneedd cceerrttiiffiiccaattee the passed certificate is self signed and the same certificate can- not be found in the list of trusted certificates. 1199 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__SSEELLFF__SSIIGGNNEEDD__CCEERRTT__IINN__CCHHAAIINN:: sseellff ssiiggnneedd cceerrttiiffiiccaattee iinn cceerrttiiffiiccaattee cchhaaiinn the certificate chain could be built up using the untrusted cer- tificates but the root could not be found locally. 2200 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__GGEETT__IISSSSUUEERR__CCEERRTT__LLOOCCAALLLLYY:: uunnaabbllee ttoo ggeett llooccaall iissssuueerr cceerrttiiffiiccaattee the issuer certificate could not be found: this occurs if the issuer certificate of an untrusted certificate cannot be found. 2211 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__VVEERRIIFFYY__LLEEAAFF__SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE:: uunnaabbllee ttoo vveerriiffyy tthhee ffiirrsstt cceerrttiiffiiccaattee no signatures could be verified because the chain contains only one certificate and it is not self signed. 2222 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__CCHHAAIINN__TTOOOO__LLOONNGG:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee cchhaaiinn ttoooo lloonngg the certificate chain length is greater than the supplied maximum depth. Unused. 2233 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__RREEVVOOKKEEDD:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee rreevvookkeedd the certificate has been revoked. 2244 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__IINNVVAALLIIDD__CCAA:: iinnvvaalliidd CCAA cceerrttiiffiiccaattee a CA certificate is invalid. Either it is not a CA or its exten- sions are not consistent with the supplied purpose. 2255 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__PPAATTHH__LLEENNGGTTHH__EEXXCCEEEEDDEEDD:: ppaatthh lleennggtthh ccoonnssttrraaiinntt eexxcceeeeddeedd the basicConstraints pathlength parameter has been exceeded. 2266 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__IINNVVAALLIIDD__PPUURRPPOOSSEE:: uunnssuuppppoorrtteedd cceerrttiiffiiccaattee ppuurrppoossee the supplied certificate cannot be used for the specified purpose. 2277 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__UUNNTTRRUUSSTTEEDD:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee nnoott ttrruusstteedd the root CA is not marked as trusted for the specified purpose. 2288 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__CCEERRTT__RREEJJEECCTTEEDD:: cceerrttiiffiiccaattee rreejjeecctteedd the root CA is marked to reject the specified purpose. 2299 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__SSUUBBJJEECCTT__IISSSSUUEERR__MMIISSMMAATTCCHH:: ssuubbjjeecctt iissssuueerr mmiissmmaattcchh the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its subject name did not match the issuer name of the current certifi- cate. Only displayed when the --iissssuueerr__cchheecckkss option is set. 3300 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__AAKKIIDD__SSKKIIDD__MMIISSMMAATTCCHH:: aauutthhoorriittyy aanndd ssuubbjjeecctt kkeeyy iiddeennttiiffiieerr mmiissmmaattcchh the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its subject key identifier was present and did not match the authority key identifier current certificate. Only displayed when the --iissssuueerr__cchheecckkss option is set. 3311 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__AAKKIIDD__IISSSSUUEERR__SSEERRIIAALL__MMIISSMMAATTCCHH:: aauutthhoorriittyy aanndd iissssuueerr sseerriiaall nnuummbbeerr mmiissmmaattcchh the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its issuer name and serial number was present and did not match the authority key identifier of the current certificate. Only displayed when the --iissssuueerr__cchheecckkss option is set. 3322 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__KKEEYYUUSSAAGGEE__NNOO__CCEERRTTSSIIGGNN::kkeeyy uussaaggee ddooeess nnoott iinncclluuddee cceerrttiiffii-- ccaattee ssiiggnniinngg the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its keyUsage extension does not permit certificate signing. 5500 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__AAPPPPLLIICCAATTIIOONN__VVEERRIIFFIICCAATTIIOONN:: aapppplliiccaattiioonn vveerriiffiiccaattiioonn ffaaiill-- uurree an application specific error. Unused. BBUUGGSS Although the issuer checks are a considerable improvement over the old technique they still suffer from limitations in the underlying X509_LOOKUP API. One consequence of this is that trusted certificates with matching subject name must either appear in a file (as specified by the --CCAAffiillee option) or a directory (as specified by --CCAAppaatthh. If they occur in both then only the certificates in the file will be recog- nised. Previous versions of OpenSSL assume certificates with matching subject name are identical and mishandled them. Previous versions of this documentation swapped the meaning of the XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__GGEETT__IISSSSUUEERR__CCEERRTT and 2200 XX550099__VV__EERRRR__UUNNAABBLLEE__TTOO__GGEETT__IISSSSUUEERR__CCEERRTT__LLOOCCAALLLLYY error codes. SSEEEE AALLSSOO _x_5_0_9(1) HHIISSTTOORRYY The -no_alt_chains options was first added to OpenSSL 1.0.2b. 1.0.2u 2019-12-20 VERIFY(1)