CFSSL

CFSSL is Cloudflare’s open source toolkit for everything TLS/SSL. It’s a comprehensive PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) and TLS toolkit that serves as both a command line utility and an HTTP API server for signing, verifying, and bundling TLS certificates.

Key Features

• Certificate Authority (CA) functionality

  • Certificate signing
  • Certificate bundling
  • OCSP server
  • CRL generation

• Multiple Deployment Options

  • Command line tool
  • HTTP API server
  • PKCS#11 support

• Advanced PKI Features

  • Certificate bundling
  • Certificate revocation
  • Certificate signing requests (CSR)
  • Key generation and management

Quick Start

Installation

go install github.com/cloudflare/cfssl/cmd/cfssl@latest
go install github.com/cloudflare/cfssl/cmd/cfssljson@latest

Basic Usage

# Generate a private key and CSR
cfssl genkey csr.json | cfssljson -bare server

# Generate a self-signed root certificate
cfssl gencert -initca csr.json | cfssljson -bare ca

# Sign a certificate
cfssl sign -ca ca.pem -ca-key ca-key.pem server.csr | cfssljson -bare server

Use Cases

• PKI Infrastructure: Set up and manage your own Certificate Authority
• TLS Deployment: Generate and manage TLS certificates at scale
• Development Environment: Create certificates for local development
• Microservices: Secure service-to-service communication
• API Security: Implement mutual TLS authentication

Advanced Features

• Customizable Signing Profiles: Define different certificate profiles for various use cases
• RESTful API: Expose certificate operations via HTTP API
• High Availability: Support for distributed certificate signing
• Monitoring: Built-in metrics and health checking
• Authentication: Multiple authentication methods for API access

Documentation

For detailed documentation and examples, visit the official documentation.

License

CFSSL is released under the BSD 2-Clause “Simplified” License.