Cryptography - PKCS12 (PFX files)

About

PKCS12 is a pkcs version 12.

PKCS12 (ie p12 extension) is intended to store both:

the private key
and public certificate parts

It has the capability of being password protected to provide some protection to the keys.

PFX was the predecessor of PKCS#12.

PKCS#12 files are used by client application such as:

browser such as Chrome, Netscape, MSIE
or email client such as MS Outlook.

Management

Chain

with Openssl pkcs12 ¹⁾, you can add a chain

Creation

A PKCS#12 file can be created by using the -export option

With

a server certificate and the required intermediates in one PEM file
and private key

openssl pkcs12 -export -in www-example-com.crt -inkey www-example-com.key -out www-example-com.p12

To Pem

Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) (OpenSsh key format)

The format becomes a base 64 hash of pkcs12.

openssl pkcs12 \
    -in /opt/truststore.pkcs12 \
    -nodes \  # Don't encrypt private keys
    -out /opt/truststore.pem \
    -passin 'pass:YourPassword'

¹⁾

openssl-pkcs12