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.\" ========================================================================
.\"
.IX Title "PROXY-CERTIFICATES 7"
.TH PROXY-CERTIFICATES 7 "2026-04-16" "1.1.1w" "OpenSSL"
.\" For nroff, turn off justification. Always turn off hyphenation; it makes
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.if n .ad l
.nh
.SH "NAME"
proxy\-certificates \- Proxy certificates in OpenSSL
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.IX Header "DESCRIPTION"
Proxy certificates are defined in \s-1RFC 3820.\s0 They are used to
extend rights to some other entity (a computer process, typically, or
sometimes to the user itself). This allows the entity to perform
operations on behalf of the owner of the \s-1EE\s0 (End Entity) certificate.
.PP
The requirements for a valid proxy certificate are:
.IP "\(bu" 4
They are issued by an End Entity, either a normal \s-1EE\s0 certificate, or
another proxy certificate.
.IP "\(bu" 4
They must not have the \fBsubjectAltName\fR or \fBissuerAltName\fR
extensions.
.IP "\(bu" 4
They must have the \fBproxyCertInfo\fR extension.
.IP "\(bu" 4
They must have the subject of their issuer, with one \fBcommonName\fR
added.
.SS "Enabling proxy certificate verification"
.IX Subsection "Enabling proxy certificate verification"
OpenSSL expects applications that want to use proxy certificates to be
specially aware of them, and make that explicit. This is done by
setting an X509 verification flag:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& X509_STORE_CTX_set_flags(ctx, X509_V_FLAG_ALLOW_PROXY_CERTS);
.Ve
.PP
or
.PP
.Vb 1
\& X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set_flags(param, X509_V_FLAG_ALLOW_PROXY_CERTS);
.Ve
.PP
See \*(L"\s-1NOTES\*(R"\s0 for a discussion on this requirement.
.SS "Creating proxy certificates"
.IX Subsection "Creating proxy certificates"
Creating proxy certificates can be done using the \fBopenssl\-x509\fR\|(1)
command, with some extra extensions:
.PP
.Vb 3
\& [ v3_proxy ]
\& # A proxy certificate MUST NEVER be a CA certificate.
\& basicConstraints=CA:FALSE
\&
\& # Usual authority key ID
\& authorityKeyIdentifier=keyid,issuer:always
\&
\& # The extension which marks this certificate as a proxy
\& proxyCertInfo=critical,language:id\-ppl\-anyLanguage,pathlen:1,policy:text:AB
.Ve
.PP
It's also possible to specify the proxy extension in a separate section:
.PP
.Vb 1
\& proxyCertInfo=critical,@proxy_ext
\&
\& [ proxy_ext ]
\& language=id\-ppl\-anyLanguage
\& pathlen=0
\& policy=text:BC
.Ve
.PP
The policy value has a specific syntax, \fIsyntag\fR:\fIstring\fR, where the
\&\fIsyntag\fR determines what will be done with the string. The following
\&\fIsyntag\fRs are recognised:
.IP "\fBtext\fR" 4
.IX Item "text"
indicates that the string is a byte sequence, without any encoding:
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& policy=text:ra\*:ksmo\*:rga\*os
.Ve
.IP "\fBhex\fR" 4
.IX Item "hex"
indicates the string is encoded hexadecimal encoded binary data, with
colons between each byte (every second hex digit):
.Sp
.Vb 1
\& policy=hex:72:E4:6B:73:6D:F6:72:67:E5:73
.Ve
.IP "\fBfile\fR" 4
.IX Item "file"
indicates that the text of the policy should be taken from a file.
The string is then a filename. This is useful for policies that are
large (more than a few lines, e.g. \s-1XML\s0 documents).
.PP
\&\fI\s-1NOTE:\s0 The proxy policy value is what determines the rights granted
to the process during the proxy certificate. It's up to the
application to interpret and combine these policies.\fR
.PP
With a proxy extension, creating a proxy certificate is a matter of
two commands:
.PP
.Vb 3
\& openssl req \-new \-config proxy.cnf \e
\& \-out proxy.req \-keyout proxy.key \e
\& \-subj "/DC=org/DC=openssl/DC=users/CN=proxy 1"
\&
\& openssl x509 \-req \-CAcreateserial \-in proxy.req \-out proxy.crt \e
\& \-CA user.crt \-CAkey user.key \-days 7 \e
\& \-extfile proxy.cnf \-extensions v3_proxy1
.Ve
.PP
You can also create a proxy certificate using another proxy
certificate as issuer (note: using a different configuration
section for the proxy extensions):
.PP
.Vb 3
\& openssl req \-new \-config proxy.cnf \e
\& \-out proxy2.req \-keyout proxy2.key \e
\& \-subj "/DC=org/DC=openssl/DC=users/CN=proxy 1/CN=proxy 2"
\&
\& openssl x509 \-req \-CAcreateserial \-in proxy2.req \-out proxy2.crt \e
\& \-CA proxy.crt \-CAkey proxy.key \-days 7 \e
\& \-extfile proxy.cnf \-extensions v3_proxy2
.Ve
.SS "Using proxy certs in applications"
.IX Subsection "Using proxy certs in applications"
To interpret proxy policies, the application would normally start with
some default rights (perhaps none at all), then compute the resulting
rights by checking the rights against the chain of proxy certificates,
user certificate and \s-1CA\s0 certificates.
.PP
The complicated part is figuring out how to pass data between your
application and the certificate validation procedure.
.PP
The following ingredients are needed for such processing:
.IP "\(bu" 4
a callback function that will be called for every certificate being
validated. The callback is called several times for each certificate,
so you must be careful to do the proxy policy interpretation at the
right time. You also need to fill in the defaults when the \s-1EE\s0
certificate is checked.
.IP "\(bu" 4
a data structure that is shared between your application code and the
callback.
.IP "\(bu" 4
a wrapper function that sets it all up.
.IP "\(bu" 4
an ex_data index function that creates an index into the generic
ex_data store that is attached to an X509 validation context.
.PP
The following skeleton code can be used as a starting point:
.PP
.Vb 4
\& #include