How to pass arguments like “Country Name” to OpenSSL when creating self signed certificate

certificateopenssl

I can create a self-signed certificate using this command

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -days 365 -nodes -x509 -keyout server.key -out server.crt

But is it possible to pass arguments like “Country Name,” “State or Province Name” etc. to OpenSSL to automate this process?

Best Answer

This website explains very well how to do this:

The magic of CSR generation without being prompted for values which go in the certificate's subject field, is in the -subj option.

-subj arg
  Replaces subject field of input request with specified data and outputs modified request.
    The arg must be formatted as /type0=value0/type1=value1/type2=...,
    characters may be escaped by \ (backslash), no spaces are skipped.

For example:

openssl ... -subj "/C=GB/ST=London/L=London/O=Global Security/OU=IT Department/CN=example.com"

See more details on the page I linked above.

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