VERIFY(1) OpenSSL VERIFY(1)
NAME
verify - Utility to verify certificates.
SYNOPSIS
openssl verify [-CApath directory] [-CAfile file] [-trusted_first]
[-purpose purpose] [-policy arg] [-ignore_critical] [-attime timestamp]
[-check_ss_sig] [-crlfile file] [-crl_download] [-crl_check]
[-crl_check_all] [-policy_check] [-explicit_policy] [-inhibit_any]
[-inhibit_map] [-x509_strict] [-extended_crl] [-use_deltas]
[-policy_print] [-no_alt_chains] [-allow_proxy_certs] [-untrusted file]
[-help] [-issuer_checks] [-trusted file] [-verbose] [-] [certificates]
DESCRIPTION
The verify command verifies certificate chains.
COMMAND OPTIONS
-CApath directory
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 -hash
option of the x509 utility). Under Unix the c_rehash script will
automatically create symbolic links to a directory of certificates.
-CAfile file A file of trusted certificates. The file should contain
multiple certificates in PEM format concatenated together.
-attime timestamp
Perform validation checks using time specified by timestamp and not
current system time. timestamp is the number of seconds since
01.01.1970 (UNIX time).
-check_ss_sig
Verify the signature on the self-signed root CA. This is disabled
by default because it doesn't add any security.
-crlfile file
File containing one or more CRL's (in PEM format) to load.
-crl_download
Attempt to download CRL information for this certificate.
-crl_check
Checks end entity certificate validity by attempting to look up a
valid CRL. If a valid CRL cannot be found an error occurs.
-untrusted file
A file of untrusted certificates. The file should contain multiple
certificates in PEM format concatenated together.
-trusted_first
Use certificates in CA file or CA directory before the certificates
in the untrusted file when building the trust chain to verify
certificates. This is mainly useful in environments with Bridge CA
or Cross-Certified CAs.
-purpose purpose
The intended use for the certificate. If this option is not
specified, verify will not consider certificate purpose during
chain verification. Currently accepted uses are sslclient,
sslserver, nssslserver, smimesign, smimeencrypt. See the VERIFY
OPERATION section for more information.
-help
Print out a usage message.
-verbose
Print extra information about the operations being performed.
-issuer_checks
Print out diagnostics relating to searches for the issuer
certificate 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.
-policy arg
Enable policy processing and add arg to the user-initial-policy-set
(see RFC5280). The policy arg can be an object name an OID in
numeric form. This argument can appear more than once.
-policy_check
Enables certificate policy processing.
-explicit_policy
Set policy variable require-explicit-policy (see RFC5280).
-inhibit_any
Set policy variable inhibit-any-policy (see RFC5280).
-inhibit_map
Set policy variable inhibit-policy-mapping (see RFC5280).
-no_alt_chains
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.
-allow_proxy_certs
Allow the verification of proxy certificates.
-trusted file
A file of additional trusted certificates. The file should contain
multiple certificates in PEM format concatenated together.
-policy_print
Print out diagnostics related to policy processing.
-crl_check
Checks end entity certificate validity by attempting to look up a
valid CRL. If a valid CRL cannot be found an error occurs.
-crl_check_all
Checks the validity of all certificates in the chain by attempting
to look up valid CRLs.
-ignore_critical
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.
-x509_strict
For strict X.509 compliance, disable non-compliant workarounds for
broken certificates.
-extended_crl
Enable extended CRL features such as indirect CRLs and alternate
CRL signing keys.
-use_deltas
Enable support for delta CRLs.
-check_ss_sig
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 -.
certificates
One or more certificates to verify. If no certificates are given,
verify will attempt to read a certificate from standard input.
Certificates must be in PEM format.
VERIFY OPERATION
The verify 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 verify 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
certificate 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
certificate whose subject name matched the issuer of the current
certificate 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
extensions for consistency with the supplied purpose. If the -purpose
option is not included then no checks are done. The supplied or "leaf"
certificate 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
CERTIFICATE EXTENSIONS section of the x509 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
signatures 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.
DIAGNOSTICS
When a verify operation fails the output messages can be somewhat
cryptic. 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
followed 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".
0 X509_V_OK: ok
the operation was successful.
2 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT: unable to get issuer
certificate
the issuer certificate of a looked up certificate could not be
found. This normally means the list of trusted certificates is not
complete.
3 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_CRL: unable to get certificate CRL
the CRL of a certificate could not be found.
4 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_DECRYPT_CERT_SIGNATURE: unable to decrypt
certificate's signature
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.
5 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_DECRYPT_CRL_SIGNATURE: unable to decrypt CRL's
signature
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.
6 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_DECODE_ISSUER_PUBLIC_KEY: unable to decode
issuer public key
the public key in the certificate SubjectPublicKeyInfo could not be
read.
7 X509_V_ERR_CERT_SIGNATURE_FAILURE: certificate signature failure
the signature of the certificate is invalid.
8 X509_V_ERR_CRL_SIGNATURE_FAILURE: CRL signature failure
the signature of the certificate is invalid.
9 X509_V_ERR_CERT_NOT_YET_VALID: certificate is not yet valid
the certificate is not yet valid: the notBefore date is after the
current time.
10 X509_V_ERR_CERT_HAS_EXPIRED: certificate has expired
the certificate has expired: that is the notAfter date is before
the current time.
11 X509_V_ERR_CRL_NOT_YET_VALID: CRL is not yet valid
the CRL is not yet valid.
12 X509_V_ERR_CRL_HAS_EXPIRED: CRL has expired
the CRL has expired.
13 X509_V_ERR_ERROR_IN_CERT_NOT_BEFORE_FIELD: format error in
certificate's notBefore field
the certificate notBefore field contains an invalid time.
14 X509_V_ERR_ERROR_IN_CERT_NOT_AFTER_FIELD: format error in
certificate's notAfter field
the certificate notAfter field contains an invalid time.
15 X509_V_ERR_ERROR_IN_CRL_LAST_UPDATE_FIELD: format error in CRL's
lastUpdate field
the CRL lastUpdate field contains an invalid time.
16 X509_V_ERR_ERROR_IN_CRL_NEXT_UPDATE_FIELD: format error in CRL's
nextUpdate field
the CRL nextUpdate field contains an invalid time.
17 X509_V_ERR_OUT_OF_MEM: out of memory
an error occurred trying to allocate memory. This should never
happen.
18 X509_V_ERR_DEPTH_ZERO_SELF_SIGNED_CERT: self signed certificate
the passed certificate is self signed and the same certificate
cannot be found in the list of trusted certificates.
19 X509_V_ERR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT_IN_CHAIN: self signed certificate in
certificate chain
the certificate chain could be built up using the untrusted
certificates but the root could not be found locally.
20 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY: unable to get local
issuer certificate
the issuer certificate could not be found: this occurs if the
issuer certificate of an untrusted certificate cannot be found.
21 X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE: unable to verify the
first certificate
no signatures could be verified because the chain contains only one
certificate and it is not self signed.
22 X509_V_ERR_CERT_CHAIN_TOO_LONG: certificate chain too long
the certificate chain length is greater than the supplied maximum
depth. Unused.
23 X509_V_ERR_CERT_REVOKED: certificate revoked
the certificate has been revoked.
24 X509_V_ERR_INVALID_CA: invalid CA certificate
a CA certificate is invalid. Either it is not a CA or its
extensions are not consistent with the supplied purpose.
25 X509_V_ERR_PATH_LENGTH_EXCEEDED: path length constraint exceeded
the basicConstraints pathlength parameter has been exceeded.
26 X509_V_ERR_INVALID_PURPOSE: unsupported certificate purpose
the supplied certificate cannot be used for the specified purpose.
27 X509_V_ERR_CERT_UNTRUSTED: certificate not trusted
the root CA is not marked as trusted for the specified purpose.
28 X509_V_ERR_CERT_REJECTED: certificate rejected
the root CA is marked to reject the specified purpose.
29 X509_V_ERR_SUBJECT_ISSUER_MISMATCH: subject issuer mismatch
the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its
subject name did not match the issuer name of the current
certificate. Only displayed when the -issuer_checks option is set.
30 X509_V_ERR_AKID_SKID_MISMATCH: authority and subject key identifier
mismatch
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
-issuer_checks option is set.
31 X509_V_ERR_AKID_ISSUER_SERIAL_MISMATCH: authority and issuer serial
number mismatch
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 -issuer_checks option is set.
32 X509_V_ERR_KEYUSAGE_NO_CERTSIGN:key usage does not include
certificate signing
the current candidate issuer certificate was rejected because its
keyUsage extension does not permit certificate signing.
50 X509_V_ERR_APPLICATION_VERIFICATION: application verification
failure
an application specific error. Unused.
BUGS
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 -CAfile option) or a directory (as specified by -CApath. If they
occur in both then only the certificates in the file will be
recognised.
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
X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT and 20
X509_V_ERR_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY error codes.
SEE ALSO
x509(1)
HISTORY
The -no_alt_chains options was first added to OpenSSL 1.0.2b.
1.0.2k 2023-11-13 VERIFY(1)
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