PKCS12_PARSE(3SSL)

📦
version 4.0.3 · 14 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ PKCS12_PARSE(3SSL) ✨

okay bestie, pull up a chair, we're reading the manual page for PKCS12_parse from OpenSSL 💖 it's giving "cryptography but make it legible" and honestly? obsessed.

🌸 NAME 🌸

PKCS12_parse — parse a PKCS#12 structure 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <openssl/pkcs12.h>

int PKCS12_parse(PKCS12 *p12, const char *pass, EVP_PKEY **pkey, X509 **cert,
                 STACK_OF(X509) **ca);

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So. PKCS12_parse() parses a PKCS12 structure. That's the whole thing, that's the vibe. 🫶

p12 is the PKCS12 structure you wanna parse, and pass is the passphrase you're using. If it works out (manifesting 🙏), then:

  • the private key gets written to *pkey
  • the corresponding certificate gets written to *cert
  • any additional certificates get written to *ca

like a little gift basket of crypto, no cap 💝

⭐ NOTES ⭐

Every single one of the params pkey, cert, and ca can be NULL, and in that case the private key, the corresponding certificate, or the additional certificates (respectively) just get discarded. bye bestie 👋

If any of pkey and cert is non-NULL, the variable it points to is initialized. If ca is non-NULL and *ca is NULL, a brand new STACK gets allocated — fresh out the box ✨. And if ca is non-NULL and *ca is a valid STACK, then the additional certificates are appended in the given order to *ca. order matters, we respect the order 💯

The friendlyName and localKeyID attributes (if present) on each certificate will be stored in the alias and keyid attributes of the X509 structure. cute little name tags on your certs 🏷️

Now, the pass parameter is interpreted as a string in the UTF-8 encoding. If it's not valid UTF-8, then it's assumed to be ISO8859-1 instead. no drama, it just pivots 🧚

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. which may include passwords from local text files, or input from the terminal or command line. if you need the deets on that, refer to the documentation of UI_OpenSSL(3), for example. iykyk 📖

🎀 RETURN VALUES 🎀

  • PKCS12_parse() returns 1 for success 💖
  • and 0 if an error occurred 💀

You can get the error from ERR_get_error(3) — go read the receipts bestie 🔍

😭 BUGS 😭

🚨 okay here's the tea, and it's lowkey painful:

  • Only a single private key and corresponding certificate is returned by this function. More complex PKCS#12 files with multiple private keys will only return the first match. one (1) match, that's it, that's all you get 😭
  • Only friendlyName and localKeyID attributes are currently stored in certificates. Other attributes are discarded. gone. not invited to the function. 🗑️
  • Attributes currently cannot be stored in the private key EVP_PKEY structure. not happening, not today 🙈

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go read those too, they're part of the lore 💜

Copyright 2002-2020 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 PKCS12_PARSE(3SSL) from OpenSSL 4.0.3, dated 2026-09-29 — stay encrypted, stay iconic, periodt 💅✨

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