4

I tried to gernerate my own root CA with a validity of 40 years as follow: openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -x509 -days 10950 -extensions v3_ca -keyout myca.key -out myca.crt -config /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf

So far so good, finally let's take a look at the certificate with openssl x509 -noout -text -in myca.crt:

   Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption
    Issuer: C=DE, ST=Berlin, L=Berlin, O=Org, OU=Unit, CN=My Root CA/[email protected]
    Validity
        Not Before: Jan 31 14:07:06 2012 GMT
        Not After : Dec 18 07:38:50 1905 GMT

Why is the valid to date (not after date) wrong in the certificate? And what can be done to correct this?


Some testing showed, that the overflowing occurs somewhere in January 2038..

1
  • I noticed that too, but on another platform: pfSense 2.x GUI. When creating a CA with a lifetime above 30y the expiration date will be 1.1.1970. Just to say this might be a generic OpenSSL bug/feature.
    – weeheavy
    Jan 31, 2012 at 14:47

1 Answer 1

6

Found the problem: (keywords "openssl time_t 32bit")

http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/1/wiki/SSL_in_The_Year2038

The "fix" in my opinion is to generate your CA on a system with 64-bit OpenSSL.

1
  • i've just created my cert on a 64-bit OS :-)
    – JMW
    Feb 6, 2012 at 10:24

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