javascript - Is it possible to generate a SSL certificate in the browser? - Stack Overflow

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For an administration interface we want to implement client authentication with SSL. The idea is that during the registration process every user generates a SSL certificate, which is registered in the browser and used for authenticating the client to the server. It is important that the private key never leaves the client. Hence it is no solution to generate the certificate on the server and send it to the client.

Is it possible to generate a SSL cert in the browser (e.g. IE 9+, Firefox 12+, Chrome) using JavaScript? Is it possible to register a certificate?

For an administration interface we want to implement client authentication with SSL. The idea is that during the registration process every user generates a SSL certificate, which is registered in the browser and used for authenticating the client to the server. It is important that the private key never leaves the client. Hence it is no solution to generate the certificate on the server and send it to the client.

Is it possible to generate a SSL cert in the browser (e.g. IE 9+, Firefox 12+, Chrome) using JavaScript? Is it possible to register a certificate?

• javascript
• ssl

Share Improve this question Follow asked May 22, 2012 at 10:51 gregorgregor 4,83333 gold badges2929 silver badges4343 bronze badges 4

• 1 I'm pretty sure that you can generate a SSL certificate, but I doubt that you'll be able to register it. – Joachim Sauer Commented May 22, 2012 at 10:54
• I've seen it done before with financial websites. But it was more install an ActiveX or run an application an it would generate the request, the certificate and install it in the personal certificate store. It also was able to prevent it from exporting between puters or profiles. How, I'm unsure. – inevio Commented May 22, 2012 at 10:55
• Are you trying to generate it on the fly during sign-up? I don't think you can unless the user has something like OpenSSL installed. – Marcus_33 Commented May 22, 2012 at 18:34
• On feasibility, there definitely are websites that generate client certificates via browser, but one implementation I've seen was in VBScript (oh god) and obviously only worked in IE. – user6269864 Commented Jan 21, 2019 at 7:46

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You can't really generate a certificate in the browser, but you can generate a certificate request (or equivalent) in the browser: the key-pair is generated within the browser and the private key never leaves it.

(Note that if you generated a certificate directly within the browser, it would at best be self-signed, since the CA wouldn't give you its private key. That's why you only get to have a certificate-request, since there's little demand for generating self-signed certificates. I think there's a Firefox extension that could do it, though.)

The certificate request is sent to the server, but the format depends on the browser and the method used. What you'll get on the server side is the public key, it's up to the service you implement to turn it into a certificate (unless you use an existing service of course). You can find more details about this in this answer.

Once the certificate is generated on the server, it can be re-imported back to be associated with the private key.

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