OpenSSL provides SSL, TLS and general purpose cryptography. It wraps the OpenSSL library.

Examples

All examples assume you have loaded OpenSSL with:

require 'openssl'

These examples build atop each other. For example the key created in the next is used in throughout these examples.

Keys

Creating a Key

This example creates a 2048 bit RSA keypair and writes it to the current directory.

key = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new 2048

open 'private_key.pem', 'w' do |io| io.write key.to_pem end
open 'public_key.pem', 'w' do |io| io.write key.public_key.to_pem end

Exporting a Key

Keys saved to disk without encryption are not secure as anyone who gets ahold of the key may use it unless it is encrypted. In order to securely export a key you may export it with a pass phrase.

cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'
pass_phrase = 'my secure pass phrase goes here'

key_secure = key.export cipher, pass_phrase

open 'private.secure.pem', 'w' do |io|
  io.write key_secure
end

OpenSSL::Cipher.ciphers returns a list of available ciphers.

Loading a Key

A key can also be loaded from a file.

key2 = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new File.read 'private_key.pem'
key2.public? # => true
key2.private? # => true

or

key3 = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new File.read 'public_key.pem'
key3.public? # => true
key3.private? # => false

Loading an Encrypted Key

OpenSSL will prompt you for your pass phrase when loading an encrypted key. If you will not be able to type in the pass phrase you may provide it when loading the key:

key4_pem = File.read 'private.secure.pem'
pass_phrase = 'my secure pass phrase goes here'
key4 = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new key4_pem, pass_phrase

RSA Encryption

RSA provides encryption and decryption using the public and private keys. You can use a variety of padding methods depending upon the intended use of encrypted data.

Encryption & Decryption

Asymmetric public/private key encryption is slow and victim to attack in cases where it is used without padding or directly to encrypt larger chunks of data. Typical use cases for RSA encryption involve “wrapping” a symmetric key with the public key of the recipient who would “unwrap” that symmetric key again using their private key. The following illustrates a simplified example of such a key transport scheme. It shouldn’t be used in practice, though, standardized protocols should always be preferred.

wrapped_key = key.public_encrypt key

A symmetric key encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the corresponding private key of the recipient.

original_key = key.private_decrypt wrapped_key

By default PKCS#1 padding will be used, but it is also possible to use other forms of padding, see PKey::RSA for further details.

Signatures

Using “private_encrypt” to encrypt some data with the private key is equivalent to applying a digital signature to the data. A verifying party may validate the signature by comparing the result of decrypting the signature with “public_decrypt” to the original data. However, OpenSSL::PKey already has methods “sign” and “verify” that handle digital signatures in a standardized way - “private_encrypt” and “public_decrypt” shouldn’t be used in practice.

To sign a document, a cryptographically secure hash of the document is computed first, which is then signed using the private key.

signature = key.sign 'SHA256', document

To validate the signature, again a hash of the document is computed and the signature is decrypted using the public key. The result is then compared to the hash just computed, if they are equal the signature was valid.

if key.verify 'SHA256', signature, document
  puts 'Valid'
else
  puts 'Invalid'
end

PBKDF2 Password-based Encryption

If supported by the underlying OpenSSL version used, Password-based Encryption should use the features of PKCS5. If not supported or if required by legacy applications, the older, less secure methods specified in RFC 2898 are also supported (see below).

PKCS5 supports PBKDF2 as it was specified in PKCS#5 v2.0. It still uses a password, a salt, and additionally a number of iterations that will slow the key derivation process down. The slower this is, the more work it requires being able to brute-force the resulting key.

Encryption

The strategy is to first instantiate a Cipher for encryption, and then to generate a random IV plus a key derived from the password using PBKDF2. PKCS #5 v2.0 recommends at least 8 bytes for the salt, the number of iterations largely depends on the hardware being used.

cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'
cipher.encrypt
iv = cipher.random_iv

pwd = 'some hopefully not to easily guessable password'
salt = OpenSSL::Random.random_bytes 16
iter = 20000
key_len = cipher.key_len
digest = OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA256')

key = OpenSSL::PKCS5.pbkdf2_hmac(pwd, salt, iter, key_len, digest)
cipher.key = key

Now encrypt the data:

encrypted = cipher.update document
encrypted << cipher.final

Decryption

Use the same steps as before to derive the symmetric AES key, this time setting the Cipher up for decryption.

cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'
cipher.decrypt
cipher.iv = iv # the one generated with #random_iv

pwd = 'some hopefully not to easily guessable password'
salt = ... # the one generated above
iter = 20000
key_len = cipher.key_len
digest = OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA256')

key = OpenSSL::PKCS5.pbkdf2_hmac(pwd, salt, iter, key_len, digest)
cipher.key = key

Now decrypt the data:

decrypted = cipher.update encrypted
decrypted << cipher.final

PKCS #5 Password-based Encryption

PKCS #5 is a password-based encryption standard documented at RFC2898. It allows a short password or passphrase to be used to create a secure encryption key. If possible, PBKDF2 as described above should be used if the circumstances allow it.

PKCS #5 uses a Cipher, a pass phrase and a salt to generate an encryption key.

pass_phrase = 'my secure pass phrase goes here'
salt = '8 octets'

Encryption

First set up the cipher for encryption

encryptor = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'
encryptor.encrypt
encryptor.pkcs5_keyivgen pass_phrase, salt

Then pass the data you want to encrypt through

encrypted = encryptor.update 'top secret document'
encrypted << encryptor.final

Decryption

Use a new Cipher instance set up for decryption

decryptor = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'
decryptor.decrypt
decryptor.pkcs5_keyivgen pass_phrase, salt

Then pass the data you want to decrypt through

plain = decryptor.update encrypted
plain << decryptor.final

X509 Certificates

Creating a Certificate

This example creates a self-signed certificate using an RSA key and a SHA1 signature.

key = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new 2048
name = OpenSSL::X509::Name.parse '/CN=nobody/DC=example'

cert = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new
cert.version = 2
cert.serial = 0
cert.not_before = Time.now
cert.not_after = Time.now + 3600

cert.public_key = key.public_key
cert.subject = name

Certificate Extensions

You can add extensions to the certificate with OpenSSL::SSL::ExtensionFactory to indicate the purpose of the certificate.

extension_factory = OpenSSL::X509::ExtensionFactory.new nil, cert

cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('basicConstraints', 'CA:FALSE', true)

cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension(
    'keyUsage', 'keyEncipherment,dataEncipherment,digitalSignature')

cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('subjectKeyIdentifier', 'hash')

The list of supported extensions (and in some cases their possible values) can be derived from the “objects.h” file in the OpenSSL source code.

Signing a Certificate

To sign a certificate set the issuer and use OpenSSL::X509::Certificate#sign with a digest algorithm. This creates a self-signed cert because we’re using the same name and key to sign the certificate as was used to create the certificate.

cert.issuer = name
cert.sign key, OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA1')

open 'certificate.pem', 'w' do |io| io.write cert.to_pem end

Loading a Certificate

Like a key, a cert can also be loaded from a file.

cert2 = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new File.read 'certificate.pem'

Verifying a Certificate

Certificate#verify will return true when a certificate was signed with the given public key.

raise 'certificate can not be verified' unless cert2.verify key

Certificate Authority

A certificate authority (CA) is a trusted third party that allows you to verify the ownership of unknown certificates. The CA issues key signatures that indicate it trusts the user of that key. A user encountering the key can verify the signature by using the CA’s public key.

CA Key

CA keys are valuable, so we encrypt and save it to disk and make sure it is not readable by other users.

ca_key = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new 2048
pass_phrase = 'my secure pass phrase goes here'

cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher.new 'AES-256-CBC'

open 'ca_key.pem', 'w', 0400 do |io|
  io.write ca_key.export(cipher, pass_phrase)
end

CA Certificate

A CA certificate is created the same way we created a certificate above, but with different extensions.

ca_name = OpenSSL::X509::Name.parse '/CN=ca/DC=example'

ca_cert = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new
ca_cert.serial = 0
ca_cert.version = 2
ca_cert.not_before = Time.now
ca_cert.not_after = Time.now + 86400

ca_cert.public_key = ca_key.public_key
ca_cert.subject = ca_name
ca_cert.issuer = ca_name

extension_factory = OpenSSL::X509::ExtensionFactory.new
extension_factory.subject_certificate = ca_cert
extension_factory.issuer_certificate = ca_cert

ca_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('subjectKeyIdentifier', 'hash')

This extension indicates the CA’s key may be used as a CA.

ca_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('basicConstraints', 'CA:TRUE', true)

This extension indicates the CA’s key may be used to verify signatures on both certificates and certificate revocations.

ca_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension(
    'keyUsage', 'cRLSign,keyCertSign', true)

Root CA certificates are self-signed.

ca_cert.sign ca_key, OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA1')

The CA certificate is saved to disk so it may be distributed to all the users of the keys this CA will sign.

open 'ca_cert.pem', 'w' do |io|
  io.write ca_cert.to_pem
end

Certificate Signing Request

The CA signs keys through a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). The CSR contains the information necessary to identify the key.

csr = OpenSSL::X509::Request.new
csr.version = 0
csr.subject = name
csr.public_key = key.public_key
csr.sign key, OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA1')

A CSR is saved to disk and sent to the CA for signing.

open 'csr.pem', 'w' do |io|
  io.write csr.to_pem
end

Creating a Certificate from a CSR

Upon receiving a CSR the CA will verify it before signing it. A minimal verification would be to check the CSR’s signature.

csr = OpenSSL::X509::Request.new File.read 'csr.pem'

raise 'CSR can not be verified' unless csr.verify csr.public_key

After verification a certificate is created, marked for various usages, signed with the CA key and returned to the requester.

csr_cert = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new
csr_cert.serial = 0
csr_cert.version = 2
csr_cert.not_before = Time.now
csr_cert.not_after = Time.now + 600

csr_cert.subject = csr.subject
csr_cert.public_key = csr.public_key
csr_cert.issuer = ca_cert.subject

extension_factory = OpenSSL::X509::ExtensionFactory.new
extension_factory.subject_certificate = csr_cert
extension_factory.issuer_certificate = ca_cert

csr_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('basicConstraints', 'CA:FALSE')

csr_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension(
    'keyUsage', 'keyEncipherment,dataEncipherment,digitalSignature')

csr_cert.add_extension \
  extension_factory.create_extension('subjectKeyIdentifier', 'hash')

csr_cert.sign ca_key, OpenSSL::Digest.new('SHA1')

open 'csr_cert.pem', 'w' do |io|
  io.write csr_cert.to_pem
end

SSL and TLS Connections

Using our created key and certificate we can create an SSL or TLS connection. An SSLContext is used to set up an SSL session.

context = OpenSSL::SSL::SSLContext.new

SSL Server

An SSL server requires the certificate and private key to communicate securely with its clients:

context.cert = cert
context.key = key

Then create an SSLServer with a TCP server socket and the context. Use the SSLServer like an ordinary TCP server.

require 'socket'

tcp_server = TCPServer.new 5000
ssl_server = OpenSSL::SSL::SSLServer.new tcp_server, context

loop do
  ssl_connection = ssl_server.accept

  data = connection.gets

  response = "I got #{data.dump}"
  puts response

  connection.puts "I got #{data.dump}"
  connection.close
end

SSL client

An SSL client is created with a TCP socket and the context. SSLSocket#connect must be called to initiate the SSL handshake and start encryption. A key and certificate are not required for the client socket.

Note that SSLSocket#close doesn’t close the underlying socket by default. Set SSLSocket#sync_close to true if you want.

require 'socket'

tcp_socket = TCPSocket.new 'localhost', 5000
ssl_client = OpenSSL::SSL::SSLSocket.new tcp_socket, context
ssl_client.sync_close = true
ssl_client.connect

ssl_client.puts "hello server!"
puts ssl_client.gets

ssl_client.close # shutdown the TLS connection and close tcp_socket

Peer Verification

An unverified SSL connection does not provide much security. For enhanced security the client or server can verify the certificate of its peer.

The client can be modified to verify the server’s certificate against the certificate authority’s certificate:

context.ca_file = 'ca_cert.pem'
context.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER

require 'socket'

tcp_socket = TCPSocket.new 'localhost', 5000
ssl_client = OpenSSL::SSL::SSLSocket.new tcp_socket, context
ssl_client.connect

ssl_client.puts "hello server!"
puts ssl_client.gets

If the server certificate is invalid or context.ca_file is not set when verifying peers an OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError will be raised.