OpenSSL Howto's
The de-facto standard implementation of SSL is OpenSSL. Matured over the past years, It is the base for security layer implementations in communications software. Handling is non-trivial, and in the earlier days documentation was sparse.
Online Certificate Tools
WebCert Online provides a number of freely accessible online tools for certificate management. This is the next best option if no OpenSSL commandline is easily available.
- Certificates, CSR and Key Creation: Live CSR and Key Creation Page
- Cert Signing Request (CSR) Checker: Live WebCert CSR Verification
- Certificate Trust Validation Checker: Live Cert and URL Test/Validation
- PKCS#12 File Creation and Analysis: Live PKCS12 File Convertion Tools
More information about WebCert itself is here.
Misc Items
- Example certificates for verification and testing Test your Applications
- How to analyze packets in a SSL encrypted network connection [read article]
- How to use stunnel to provide SSL encryption support for a webserver [read article]
The OpenSSL Manuals
- The OpenSSL "man1" manual pages for commandline tools [search manuals]
- The OpenSSL "man3" manual pages for the libssl API [search manuals]
- The OpenSSL "man5" manual pages for the config files [search manuals]
- The OpenSSL "man7" manual pages for the libcrypto API [search manuals]
OpenSSL API Examples
With OpenSSL's documentation not yet complete and sparse,the following sample programs demonstrate various functions and enable "learning by doing". For additional programs, see also the "demo" directory within the OpenSSL source package.