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Accepted
Adam Matan
Asked: 2015-01-24 14:13:21 +0800 CST

Displaying a remote SSL certificate details using CLI tools

  • 772

In Chrome, clicking on the green HTTPS lock icon opens a window with the certificate details:

enter image description here

When I tried the same with cURL, I got only some of the information:

$ curl -vvI https://gnupg.org
* Rebuilt URL to: https://gnupg.org/
* Hostname was NOT found in DNS cache
*   Trying 217.69.76.60...
* Connected to gnupg.org (217.69.76.60) port 443 (#0)
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
* Server certificate: gnupg.org
* Server certificate: Gandi Standard SSL CA
* Server certificate: UTN-USERFirst-Hardware
> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.37.1
> Host: gnupg.org
> Accept: */*

Any idea how to get the full certificate information form a command line tool (cURL or other)?

ssl

14 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You should be able to use OpenSSL for your purpose:

    echo | openssl s_client -showcerts -servername gnupg.org -connect gnupg.org:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -inform pem -noout -text

    That command connects to the desired website and pipes the certificate in PEM format on to another openssl command that reads and parses the details.

    (Note that "redundant" -servername parameter is necessary to make openssl do a request with SNI support.)

    • 484

  2. Basic certificate info

    That's my everyday script:

    curl --insecure -vvI https://www.example.com 2>&1 | awk 'BEGIN { cert=0 } /^\* SSL connection/ { cert=1 } /^\*/ { if (cert) print }'

    Output:

    * SSL connection using TLSv1.3 / TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
* ALPN, server accepted to use h2
* Server certificate:
*  subject: C=US; ST=California; L=Los Angeles; O=Verizon Digital Media Services, Inc.; CN=www.example.org
*  start date: Dec 10 00:00:00 2021 GMT
*  expire date: Dec  9 23:59:59 2022 GMT
*  issuer: C=US; O=DigiCert Inc; CN=DigiCert TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
* Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use
* Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed)
* Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0
* Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x5588e1f5ae30)
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4):
* TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4):
* old SSL session ID is stale, removing
* Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS == 100)!
* Connection #0 to host www.example.com left intact

    Full certificate info

    openssl s_client -connect www.example.com:443 </dev/null 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -inform pem -text
    • 143 
  3. nmap -p 443 --script ssl-cert gnupg.org

    The -p 443 specifies to scan port 443 only. All ports will be scanned if it is omitted, and the certificate details for any SSL service that is found will be displayed. The --script ssl-cert tells the Nmap scripting engine to run only the ssl-cert script. From the doc, this script "(r)etrieves a server's SSL certificate. The amount of information printed about the certificate depends on the verbosity level."

    Sample output:

    Starting Nmap 7.40 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2017-11-01 13:35 PDT
Nmap scan report for gnupg.org (217.69.76.60)
Host is up (0.16s latency).
Other addresses for gnupg.org (not scanned): (null)
rDNS record for 217.69.76.60: www.gnupg.org
PORT    STATE SERVICE
443/tcp open  https
| ssl-cert: Subject: commonName=gnupg.org
| Subject Alternative Name: DNS:gnupg.org, DNS:www.gnupg.org
| Issuer: commonName=Gandi Standard SSL CA 2/organizationName=Gandi/stateOrProvinceName=Paris/countryName=FR
| Public Key type: rsa
| Public Key bits: 2048
| Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
| Not valid before: 2015-12-21T00:00:00
| Not valid after:  2018-03-19T23:59:59
| MD5:   c3a7 e0ed 388f 87cb ec7f fd3e 71f2 1c3e
|_SHA-1: 5196 ecf5 7aed 139f a511 735b bfb5 7534 df63 41ba

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 2.31 seconds
    • 75

  4. Depends on what kind of information you want, but: 

    openssl s_client -showcerts -connect gnupg.org:443

    should give you most, although not as nicely human readable like Chrome presents it.

    • 38

  5. For completeness: if you have installed on your system Java 7 or higher

     keytool -printcert -sslserver $host[:$port]

    shows the chain (as served) with nearly all details in a mostly rather ugly format.

    Whether you should have Java installed on your system I do not answer.

    • 28

  6. If you want to do this in Windows you can use PowerShell with the following function:

    function Retrieve-ServerCertFromSocket ($hostname, $port=443, $SNIHeader, [switch]$FailWithoutTrust)
{
    if (!$SNIHeader) {
        $SNIHeader = $hostname
    }

    $cert = $null
    try {
        $tcpclient = new-object System.Net.Sockets.tcpclient
        $tcpclient.Connect($hostname,$port)

        #Authenticate with SSL
        if (!$FailWithoutTrust) {
            $sslstream = new-object System.Net.Security.SslStream -ArgumentList $tcpclient.GetStream(),$false, {$true}
        } else {
            $sslstream = new-object System.Net.Security.SslStream -ArgumentList $tcpclient.GetStream(),$false
        }

        $sslstream.AuthenticateAsClient($SNIHeader)
        $cert =  [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2]($sslstream.remotecertificate)

     } catch {
        throw "Failed to retrieve remote certificate from $hostname`:$port because $_"
     } finally {
        #cleanup
        if ($sslStream) {$sslstream.close()}
        if ($tcpclient) {$tcpclient.close()}        
     }    
    return $cert
}

    This allows you to do some neat things like

    #Save to file and open 
Retrieve-ServerCertFromSocket www.wrish.com 443 | Export-Certificate -FilePath C:\temp\test.cer ; start c:\temp\test.cer

#Display the cert details
Retrieve-ServerCertFromSocket www.wrish.com 443 | fl subject,*not*,Thumb*,ser*
    • 9

  7. If you only want the expiry date (which isn't exactly the answer but is 9/10 what people use the Chrome cert details for), you can use:

    echo | openssl s_client -connect google.com:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -enddate

    Useful for scripts etc.

    c4urself@eos ~ → which ssl_expiry
ssl_expiry () {
  echo | openssl s_client -connect ${1}:443 2> /dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -enddate
}
c4urself@eos ~ → ssl_expiry google.com
notAfter=Jun 12 16:54:00 2018 GMT
    • 9

  8. To check for SSL certificate details, I use the following command line tool ever since it's become available:

    https://github.com/azet/tls_tools

    It's great to double-check you have all info correct for re-issuing certs or validating existing ones, and also as few dependencies AND it requires no setup.

    This is what the first few lines of the output look like:

    $ ./check_certificate_chain.py gnupg.org 443

>> Certificate Chain:

 [+]*       OU=Domain Control Validated, OU=Gandi Standard SSL, CN=gnupg.org
 [+]**      C=FR, O=GANDI SAS, CN=Gandi Standard SSL CA
 [+]***     C=US, ST=UT, L=Salt Lake City, O=The USERTRUST Network, OU=http://www.usertrust.com, CN=UTN-USERFirst-Hardware

>> Certificate Information:

................................................................................
- [Subject]:        OU=Domain Control Validated, OU=Gandi Standard SSL, CN=gnupg.org
- [Issuer]:     C=FR, O=GANDI SAS, CN=Gandi Standard SSL CA
- [Valid from]:     Mar 18 00:00:00 2014 GMT
- [Valid until]:    Mar 18 23:59:59 2016 GMT
- [Authority]:      Is not a CA
- [Version]:        2
- [Serial No.]:     43845251655098616578492338727643475746
- [X.509 Extension Details]:
  -- [x509_authorityKeyIdentifier]:
       keyid:B6:A8:FF:A2:A8:2F:D0:A6:CD:4B:B1:68:F3:E7:50:10:31:A7:79:21

    That output is followed by the whole certificate chain at the same level of detail.

    What I like that instead of being a ssl-centric cli tool like openssl's s_client, this one tries to just do the one job we need most of the time. Of course openssl is more flexible (i.e. also checking clientcerts, imaps on odd ports, etc) - but I don't always need that.

    Alternatively, if you have time to dig in & setup or appreciate more features, there's the bigger tool named sslyze (not using it since dependencies and install...)

    • 7

  9. I use a shell script for this. It's just a wrapper around the openssl command that saves me from remembering the syntax.

    It provides options for parsing out most of the certificate information I'm typically interested in, or display raw openssl output.

    Can either query a local certificate file, or a remote server.

    Usage:

    $ ssl-cert-info --help
Usage: ssl-cert-info [options]

This shell script is a simple wrapper around the openssl binary. It uses
s_client to get certificate information from remote hosts, or x509 for local
certificate files. It can parse out some of the openssl output or just dump all
of it as text.

Options:

  --all-info   Print all output, including boring things like Modulus and 
               Exponent.

  --alt        Print Subject Alternative Names. These will be typically be 
               additional hostnames that the certificate is valid for.

  --cn         Print commonName from Subject. This is typically the host for 
               which the certificate was issued.

  --debug      Print additional info that might be helpful when debugging this
               script.

  --end        Print certificate expiration date. For additional functionality
               related to certificate expiration, take a look at this script:
               "http://prefetch.net/code/ssl-cert-check".

  --dates      Print start and end dates of when the certificate is valid.

  --file       Use a local certificate file for input.

  --help       Print this help message.

  --host       Fetch the certificate from this remote host.

  --issuer     Print the certificate issuer.

  --most-info  Print almost everything. Skip boring things like Modulus and
               Exponent.

  --option     Pass any openssl option through to openssl to get its raw
               output.

  --port       Use this port when conneting to remote host. If ommitted, port
               defaults to 443.

  --subject    Print the certificate Subject -- typically address and org name.

Examples:

  1. Print a list of all hostnames that the certificate used by amazon.com 
     is valid for.

     ssl-cert-info --host amazon.com --alt
     DNS:uedata.amazon.com
     DNS:amazon.com
     DNS:amzn.com
     DNS:www.amzn.com
     DNS:www.amazon.com

  2. Print issuer of certificate used by smtp.gmail.com. Fetch certficate info
     over port 465.

     ssl-cert-info --host smtp.gmail.com --port 465 --issuer
     issuer= 
         countryName               = US
         organizationName          = Google Inc
         commonName                = Google Internet Authority G2

  3. Print valid dates for the certificate, using a local file as the source of 
     certificate data. Dates are formatted using the date command and display
     time in your local timezone instead of GMT.

     ssl-cert-info --file /path/to/file.crt --dates
     valid from: 2014-02-04 16:00:00 PST
     valid till: 2017-02-04 15:59:59 PST


  4. Print certificate serial number. This script doesn't have a special option
     to parse out the serial number, so will use the generic --option flag to
     pass '-serial' through to openssl.

     ssl-cert-info --host gmail.com --option -serial
     serial=4BF004B4DDC9C2F8

    You can get the script here: https://web.archive.org/web/20190528035412/http://giantdorks.org/alain/shell-script-to-check-ssl-certificate-info-like-expiration-date-and-subject/

    • 4 
  10. nmap -sV -sC google.com -p 443
    • 3