[openssl-dev] OpenSSL and certain PEM formats

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 02:29:44PM +0000, Dr. Stephen Henson wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2014, Sean Leonard wrote:
> 
> > 
> > On Dec 19, 2014, at 11:35 AM, Kurt Roeckx <kurt at roeckx.be> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 03:05:32PM +0000, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
> > >> On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 08:47:55AM -0500, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> > >> 
> > >>> Does OpenSSL have documented someplace exactly what it means to have a
> > >>> "TRUSTED CERTIFICATE"?
> > >> 
> > >> It is a certificate + auxiliary data which specifies a friendly name
> > >> plus a set of EKUs.
> > > 
> > > Mozilla provides a list of root certificates and that includes at
> > > least the trust settings for that certificate.  
> > 
> > What exactly is the Mozilla (NSS) format? How does it differ from the OpenSSL format?
> > 
> 
> The last time I checked NSS stored the trust data in a database (Berkeley DB)
> and the trust attributes could be accessed via PKCS#11. I'm not aware of any
> way to export the certificates to a file which retains the trust settings.
> 
> I'm not aware of any standard for trust settings. There certainly wasn't
> one when this was added to OpenSSL.

The source is actually a text file you can see here:
https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/security/nss/lib/ckfw/builtins/certdata.txt

As far as I know they turn the file into a database, not the other
way around.


Kurt