Provided by: openssl_1.0.1f-1ubuntu2.27_amd64 bug

NAME

       ocsp - Online Certificate Status Protocol utility

SYNOPSIS

       openssl ocsp [-out file] [-issuer file] [-cert file] [-serial n] [-signer file] [-signkey
       file] [-sign_other file] [-no_certs] [-req_text] [-resp_text] [-text] [-reqout file]
       [-respout file] [-reqin file] [-respin file] [-nonce] [-no_nonce] [-url URL] [-host
       host:n] [-path] [-CApath dir] [-CAfile file] [-no_alt_chains]] [-VAfile file]
       [-validity_period n] [-status_age n] [-noverify] [-verify_other file] [-trust_other]
       [-no_intern] [-no_signature_verify] [-no_cert_verify] [-no_chain] [-no_cert_checks] [-port
       num] [-index file] [-CA file] [-rsigner file] [-rkey file] [-rother file] [-resp_no_certs]
       [-nmin n] [-ndays n] [-resp_key_id] [-nrequest n] [-md5|-sha1|...]

DESCRIPTION

       The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) enables applications to determine the
       (revocation) state of an identified certificate (RFC 2560).

       The ocsp command performs many common OCSP tasks. It can be used to print out requests and
       responses, create requests and send queries to an OCSP responder and behave like a mini
       OCSP server itself.

OCSP CLIENT OPTIONS

       -out filename
           specify output filename, default is standard output.

       -issuer filename
           This specifies the current issuer certificate. This option can be used multiple times.
           The certificate specified in filename must be in PEM format. This option MUST come
           before any -cert options.

       -cert filename
           Add the certificate filename to the request. The issuer certificate is taken from the
           previous issuer option, or an error occurs if no issuer certificate is specified.

       -serial num
           Same as the cert option except the certificate with serial number num is added to the
           request. The serial number is interpreted as a decimal integer unless preceded by 0x.
           Negative integers can also be specified by preceding the value by a - sign.

       -signer filename, -signkey filename
           Sign the OCSP request using the certificate specified in the signer option and the
           private key specified by the signkey option. If the signkey option is not present then
           the private key is read from the same file as the certificate. If neither option is
           specified then the OCSP request is not signed.

       -sign_other filename
           Additional certificates to include in the signed request.

       -nonce, -no_nonce
           Add an OCSP nonce extension to a request or disable OCSP nonce addition.  Normally if
           an OCSP request is input using the respin option no nonce is added: using the nonce
           option will force addition of a nonce.  If an OCSP request is being created (using
           cert and serial options) a nonce is automatically added specifying no_nonce overrides
           this.

       -req_text, -resp_text, -text
           print out the text form of the OCSP request, response or both respectively.

       -reqout file, -respout file
           write out the DER encoded certificate request or response to file.

       -reqin file, -respin file
           read OCSP request or response file from file. These option are ignored if OCSP request
           or response creation is implied by other options (for example with serial, cert and
           host options).

       -url responder_url
           specify the responder URL. Both HTTP and HTTPS (SSL/TLS) URLs can be specified.

       -host hostname:port, -path pathname
           if the host option is present then the OCSP request is sent to the host hostname on
           port port. path specifies the HTTP path name to use or "/" by default.

       -CAfile file, -CApath pathname
           file or pathname containing trusted CA certificates. These are used to verify the
           signature on the OCSP response.

       -no_alt_chains
           See verify manual page for details.

       -verify_other file
           file containing additional certificates to search when attempting to locate the OCSP
           response signing certificate. Some responders omit the actual signer's certificate
           from the response: this option can be used to supply the necessary certificate in such
           cases.

       -trust_other
           the certificates specified by the -verify_other option should be explicitly trusted
           and no additional checks will be performed on them. This is useful when the complete
           responder certificate chain is not available or trusting a root CA is not appropriate.

       -VAfile file
           file containing explicitly trusted responder certificates. Equivalent to the
           -verify_other and -trust_other options.

       -noverify
           don't attempt to verify the OCSP response signature or the nonce values. This option
           will normally only be used for debugging since it disables all verification of the
           responders certificate.

       -no_intern
           ignore certificates contained in the OCSP response when searching for the signers
           certificate. With this option the signers certificate must be specified with either
           the -verify_other or -VAfile options.

       -no_signature_verify
           don't check the signature on the OCSP response. Since this option tolerates invalid
           signatures on OCSP responses it will normally only be used for testing purposes.

       -no_cert_verify
           don't verify the OCSP response signers certificate at all. Since this option allows
           the OCSP response to be signed by any certificate it should only be used for testing
           purposes.

       -no_chain
           do not use certificates in the response as additional untrusted CA certificates.

       -no_cert_checks
           don't perform any additional checks on the OCSP response signers certificate.  That is
           do not make any checks to see if the signers certificate is authorised to provide the
           necessary status information: as a result this option should only be used for testing
           purposes.

       -validity_period nsec, -status_age age
           these options specify the range of times, in seconds, which will be tolerated in an
           OCSP response. Each certificate status response includes a notBefore time and an
           optional notAfter time. The current time should fall between these two values, but the
           interval between the two times may be only a few seconds. In practice the OCSP
           responder and clients clocks may not be precisely synchronised and so such a check may
           fail. To avoid this the -validity_period option can be used to specify an acceptable
           error range in seconds, the default value is 5 minutes.

           If the notAfter time is omitted from a response then this means that new status
           information is immediately available. In this case the age of the notBefore field is
           checked to see it is not older than age seconds old. By default this additional check
           is not performed.

       -md5|-sha1|-sha256|-ripemod160|...
           this option sets digest algorithm to use for certificate identification in the OCSP
           request. By default SHA-1 is used.

OCSP SERVER OPTIONS

       -index indexfile
           indexfile is a text index file in ca format containing certificate revocation
           information.

           If the index option is specified the ocsp utility is in responder mode, otherwise it
           is in client mode. The request(s) the responder processes can be either specified on
           the command line (using issuer and serial options), supplied in a file (using the
           respin option) or via external OCSP clients (if port or url is specified).

           If the index option is present then the CA and rsigner options must also be present.

       -CA file
           CA certificate corresponding to the revocation information in indexfile.

       -rsigner file
           The certificate to sign OCSP responses with.

       -rother file
           Additional certificates to include in the OCSP response.

       -resp_no_certs
           Don't include any certificates in the OCSP response.

       -resp_key_id
           Identify the signer certificate using the key ID, default is to use the subject name.

       -rkey file
           The private key to sign OCSP responses with: if not present the file specified in the
           rsigner option is used.

       -port portnum
           Port to listen for OCSP requests on. The port may also be specified using the url
           option.

       -nrequest number
           The OCSP server will exit after receiving number requests, default unlimited.

       -nmin minutes, -ndays days
           Number of minutes or days when fresh revocation information is available: used in the
           nextUpdate field. If neither option is present then the nextUpdate field is omitted
           meaning fresh revocation information is immediately available.

OCSP Response verification.

       OCSP Response follows the rules specified in RFC2560.

       Initially the OCSP responder certificate is located and the signature on the OCSP request
       checked using the responder certificate's public key.

       Then a normal certificate verify is performed on the OCSP responder certificate building
       up a certificate chain in the process. The locations of the trusted certificates used to
       build the chain can be specified by the CAfile and CApath options or they will be looked
       for in the standard OpenSSL certificates directory.

       If the initial verify fails then the OCSP verify process halts with an error.

       Otherwise the issuing CA certificate in the request is compared to the OCSP responder
       certificate: if there is a match then the OCSP verify succeeds.

       Otherwise the OCSP responder certificate's CA is checked against the issuing CA
       certificate in the request. If there is a match and the OCSPSigning extended key usage is
       present in the OCSP responder certificate then the OCSP verify succeeds.

       Otherwise the root CA of the OCSP responders CA is checked to see if it is trusted for
       OCSP signing. If it is the OCSP verify succeeds.

       If none of these checks is successful then the OCSP verify fails.

       What this effectively means if that if the OCSP responder certificate is authorised
       directly by the CA it is issuing revocation information about (and it is correctly
       configured) then verification will succeed.

       If the OCSP responder is a "global responder" which can give details about multiple CAs
       and has its own separate certificate chain then its root CA can be trusted for OCSP
       signing. For example:

        openssl x509 -in ocspCA.pem -addtrust OCSPSigning -out trustedCA.pem

       Alternatively the responder certificate itself can be explicitly trusted with the -VAfile
       option.

NOTES

       As noted, most of the verify options are for testing or debugging purposes.  Normally only
       the -CApath, -CAfile and (if the responder is a 'global VA') -VAfile options need to be
       used.

       The OCSP server is only useful for test and demonstration purposes: it is not really
       usable as a full OCSP responder. It contains only a very simple HTTP request handling and
       can only handle the POST form of OCSP queries. It also handles requests serially meaning
       it cannot respond to new requests until it has processed the current one. The text index
       file format of revocation is also inefficient for large quantities of revocation data.

       It is possible to run the ocsp application in responder mode via a CGI script using the
       respin and respout options.

EXAMPLES

       Create an OCSP request and write it to a file:

        openssl ocsp -issuer issuer.pem -cert c1.pem -cert c2.pem -reqout req.der

       Send a query to an OCSP responder with URL http://ocsp.myhost.com/ save the response to a
       file and print it out in text form

        openssl ocsp -issuer issuer.pem -cert c1.pem -cert c2.pem \
            -url http://ocsp.myhost.com/ -resp_text -respout resp.der

       Read in an OCSP response and print out text form:

        openssl ocsp -respin resp.der -text

       OCSP server on port 8888 using a standard ca configuration, and a separate responder
       certificate. All requests and responses are printed to a file.

        openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -port 8888 -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
               -text -out log.txt

       As above but exit after processing one request:

        openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -port 8888 -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
            -nrequest 1

       Query status information using internally generated request:

        openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
            -issuer demoCA/cacert.pem -serial 1

       Query status information using request read from a file, write response to a second file.

        openssl ocsp -index demoCA/index.txt -rsigner rcert.pem -CA demoCA/cacert.pem
            -reqin req.der -respout resp.der

HISTORY

       The -no_alt_chains options was first added to OpenSSL 1.0.1n and 1.0.2b.