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Tux
Asked: 2019-10-02 04:27:54 +0800 CST

Generate private key encrypted with password using openssl

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I'm using openssl to sign files, it works but I would like the private key file is encrypted with a password. These are the commands I'm using, I would like to know the equivalent commands using a password:

----- EDITED -----

I put here the updated commands with password: 

- Use the following command to generate your private key using the RSA algorithm:

$ openssl genrsa -aes256 -passout pass:foobar -out private.key 2048


- Use the following command to extract your public key:

$ openssl rsa -in private.key -passin pass:foobar -pubout -out public.key


- Use the following command to sign the file:

$ openssl dgst -sha512 -sign private.key -passin pass:foobar -out signature.bin file.txt


- To verify the signature:

$ openssl dgst -sha512 -verify public.key -signature signature.bin file.txt
encryption command-line password openssl

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can add the "passout" flag, for the "foobar" password it would be: -passout pass:foobar

    In your first example it become openssl genrsa -passout pass:foobar -out private.key 2048

    You can also use: openssl genrsa -aes256 -out private.key 2048 This will ask you to enter a passphrase.

    You can read more here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4294689/how-to-generate-an-openssl-key-using-a-passphrase-from-the-command-line

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