Does .pem file contain both private and public keys?
You can decode your PEM formatted x509 certificate with the following command:
openssl x509 -in cert.pem -text -noout
PEM certificate contains public key only or private key only or both.
For the following example:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
you will get:
Certificate:
Data:
Version: 3 (0x2)
Serial Number: 0 (0x0)
Signature Algorithm: ecdsa-with-SHA256
Issuer: C = BE, O = GnuTLS, OU = GnuTLS certificate authority, ST = Leuven, CN = GnuTLS certificate authority
Validity
Not Before: May 23 20:38:21 2011 GMT
Not After : Dec 22 07:41:51 2012 GMT
Subject: C = BE, O = GnuTLS, OU = GnuTLS certificate authority, ST = Leuven, CN = GnuTLS certificate authority
Subject Public Key Info:
Public Key Algorithm: id-ecPublicKey
Public-Key: (256 bit)
pub:
04:52:d8:8d:23:8a:e3:67:d7:86:36:b1:20:0b:09:
7d:c8:c9:ba:a2:20:95:2f:c5:4a:63:fa:83:5f:ce:
78:2f:8f:f3:62:ca:fd:b7:f7:80:56:9d:6e:17:b9:
0e:11:4c:48:b2:c0:af:3b:59:17:16:30:68:09:07:
99:17:fe:dd:a7
ASN1 OID: prime256v1
NIST CURVE: P-256
X509v3 extensions:
X509v3 Basic Constraints: critical
CA:TRUE
X509v3 Key Usage: critical
Certificate Sign, CRL Sign
X509v3 Subject Key Identifier:
F0:B4:81:FE:98:12:BF:B5:28:B9:64:40:03:CB:CC:1F:66:4E:28:03
Signature Algorithm: ecdsa-with-SHA256
30:45:02:20:31:ae:c0:3d:4a:3f:21:be:85:17:fc:f0:c7:b2:
31:07:2a:38:56:43:d1:36:d5:95:e1:7e:52:c0:06:43:87:a7:
02:21:00:97:8c:0e:b8:3c:0a:41:af:ae:a5:cf:06:7e:d5:c4:
d8:2f:ff:e2:62:80:34:10:ba:22:dd:35:81:46:93:22:9a
To understand difference between Public Key Algorithm
and Signature Algorithm
sections read this (both are public).
A PEM file may contain just about anything including a public key, a private key, or both, because a PEM file is not a standard. In effect PEM just means the file contains a base64-encoded bit of data. It is called a PEM file by allusion to the old Privacy-Enhanced Mail standards which preceded S/MIME as a mail security standard. These standards specified the format of various keys and messages in a particular base64 format. See RFC 1421 for example.
Typically a PEM file contains a base64 encoded key or certificate with header and footer lines of the form -----BEGIN <whatever>-----
and -----END <whatever>----
. Over time there have evolved many possibilities for <whatever>
, including private keys, public keys, X509 certificates, PKCS7 data, files containing multiple certificates, files containing both the private key and the X509 certificate, PKCS#10 certificate signing requests, ...
RFC 7468 has been written to document this de facto format.