PKCS12_NEWPASS(3ossl)

📦
version 3.5.9 · 8 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44

✨ PKCS12_NEWPASS ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the PKCS12_newpass(3ossl) page from the OpenSSL manual 💖 this is the lil function that changes the password on a PKCS12 structure. group chat briefing starts now 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

PKCS12_newpass — change the password of a PKCS12 structure 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <openssl/pkcs12.h>

int PKCS12_newpass(PKCS12 *p12, const char *oldpass, const char *newpass);

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

PKCS12_newpass() changes the password of a PKCS12 structure. that's it, that's the whole vibe. glow-up for your password, no cap ✨

p12 is a pointer to a PKCS12 structure. oldpass is the existing password and newpass is the new password. simple as 🦋

Each of oldpass and newpass is independently interpreted as a string in the UTF-8 encoding. If it is not valid UTF-8, it is assumed to be ISO8859-1 instead. like, they each get their own reading, no shared decisions here 💅

In particular, this means that passwords in the locale character set (or code page on Windows) must potentially be converted to UTF-8 before use. This may include passwords from local text files, or input from the terminal or command line. Refer to the documentation of UI_OpenSSL(3), for example. so yes bestie, convert first, or suffer 🙈

If the PKCS#12 structure does not have a password, then you must use the empty string "" for oldpass. Using NULL for oldpass will result in a PKCS12_newpass() failure. not me making you type "" instead of NULL, but that's the rule 😭

If the wrong password is used for oldpass then the function will fail, with a MAC verification error. In rare cases the PKCS12 structure does not contain a MAC: in this case it will usually fail with a decryption padding error. so like, wrong password = 💀 either way, just different flavour of 💀

🌈 RETURN VALUES 🌈

PKCS12_newpass() returns 1 on success or 0 on failure. slay when it's 1, sad when it's 0 🥲

Applications can retrieve the most recent error from PKCS12_newpass() with ERR_get_error(). go get the receipts, bestie 🧾✨

⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

This example loads a PKCS#12 file, changes its password and writes out the result to a new file. main character behaviour honestly 👑

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <openssl/pem.h>
#include <openssl/err.h>
#include <openssl/pkcs12.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    FILE *fp;
    PKCS12 *p12;

    if (argc != 5) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: pkread p12file password newpass opfile\n");
        return 1;
    }
    if ((fp = fopen(argv[1], "rb")) == NULL) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error opening file %s\n", argv[1]);
        return 1;
    }
    p12 = d2i_PKCS12_fp(fp, NULL);
    fclose(fp);
    if (p12 == NULL) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error reading PKCS#12 file\n");
        ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr);
        return 1;
    }
    if (PKCS12_newpass(p12, argv[2], argv[3]) == 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error changing password\n");
        ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr);
        PKCS12_free(p12);
        return 1;
    }
    if ((fp = fopen(argv[4], "wb")) == NULL) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error opening file %s\n", argv[4]);
        PKCS12_free(p12);
        return 1;
    }
    i2d_PKCS12_fp(fp, p12);
    PKCS12_free(p12);
    fclose(fp);
    return 0;
}

💀 BUGS 💀

The password format is a NULL terminated ASCII string which is converted to Unicode form internally. As a result some passwords cannot be supplied to this function. like, genuinely cannot, not a skill issue on your end, it's just the format bestie 😭

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

Copyright 2016-2018 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy in the file LICENSE in the source distribution or at <https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html>.

and that's the whole page bestie!! this was OpenSSL version 3.5.9, dated 2026-09-29, and the page itself is PKCS12_NEWPASS(3ossl) 🎀 go change those passwords, stay UTF-8, and remember: "" not NULL. mwah 💜💅✨

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