DESCRIPTIONOpenSSL is a cryptography toolkit implementing the Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1)
network protocols and related cryptography standards required by
them.
The openssl program is a command line tool for using the various
cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell.
It can be used for
o Creation of RSA, DH and DSA key parameters
o Creation of X.509 certificates, CSRs and CRLs
o Calculation of Message Digests
o Encryption and Decryption with Ciphers
o SSL/TLS Client and Server Tests
o Handling of S/MIME signed or encrypted mail
COMMAND SUMMARYThe openssl program provides a rich variety of commands (command in the SYNOPSIS above), each of which often has a
wealth of options and arguments (command_opts and command_args in the SYNOPSIS).
The pseudo-commands list-standard-commands, list-message-digest-commands,
and list-cipher-commands output a list (one entry per line) of the
names of all standard commands, message digest commands, or cipher commands,
respectively, that are available in the present openssl utility.
The pseudo-command no-XXX tests whether a command of the specified name is
available. If no command named XXX exists, it returns 0 (success) and prints no-XXX; otherwise it returns 1 and prints XXX. In both cases, the output goes to stdout and nothing
is printed to stderr. Additional command line arguments are always
ignored. Since for each cipher there is a command of the same name,
this provides an easy way for shell scripts to test for the availability
of ciphers in the openssl program. (no-XXX is not able to detect pseudo-commands such as quit
, list-... -commands, or no-XXX itself.)
STANDARD
COMMANDS
asn1parse Parse an ASN.1 sequence.
ca Certificate Authority (CA) Management.
ciphers Cipher Suite Description Determination.
crl Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Management.
crl2pkcs7 CRL to PKCS#7 Conversion.
dgst Message Digest Calculation.
dh Diffie-Hellman Parameter Management. Obsoleted by dhparam.
dsa DSA Data Management.
dsaparam DSA Parameter Generation.
enc Encoding with Ciphers.
errstr Error Number to Error String Conversion.
dhparam Generation and Management of Diffie-Hellman Parameters.
gendh Generation of Diffie-Hellman Parameters. Obsoleted by dhparam.
rsautl RSA utility for signing, verification, encryption, and decryption.
s_client This implements a generic SSL/TLS client which can establish
a transparent connection to a remote server speaking SSL/TLS. It's
intended for testing purposes only and provides only rudimentary
interface functionality but internally uses mostly all functionality
of the OpenSSL ssl library.
s_server This implements a generic SSL/TLS server which accepts connections
from remote clients speaking SSL/TLS. It's intended for testing
purposes only and provides only rudimentary interface functionality but
internally uses mostly all functionality of the OpenSSL ssl library.
It provides both an own command line oriented protocol for testing
SSL functions and a simple HTTP response facility to emulate an SSL/TLS-aware
webserver.
idea idea-cbc idea-cfb idea-ecb idea-ofb IDEA Cipher
rc2 rc2-cbc rc2-cfb rc2-ecb rc2-ofb RC2 Cipher
rc4 RC4 Cipher
rc5 rc5-cbc rc5-cfb rc5-ecb rc5-ofb RC5 Cipher
PASS PHRASE ARGUMENTSSeveral commands accept password arguments, typically using
-passin and -passout for input and output passwords respectively.
These allow the password to be obtained from a variety of sources.
Both of these options take a single argument whose format is described
below. If no password argument is given and a password is required
then the user is prompted to enter one: this will typically be read
from the current terminal with echoing turned off.
pass:password the actual password is password. Since the password is visible
to utilities (like 'ps' under UNIX) this UNIX form should only be
used where security is not important.
env:var obtain the password from the environment variable var. Since
the environment of other processes is visible on certain platforms
(e.g. ps under certain UNIX OSes) this option should be used with
caution.
file:pathname the first line of pathname is the password. If the same pathname
argument is supplied to -passin and -passout arguments then the
first line will be used for the input password and the next line
for the output password. pathname need not refer to a regular file:
it could for example refer to a device or named pipe.
fd:number read the password from the file descriptor number. This can
be used to send the data via a pipe for example.
stdin read the password from standard input.
SEE ALSOasn1parse(1) , ca(1) , config(5) , crl(1) , crl2pkcs7(1), dgst(1) , dhparam(1) , dsa(1) , dsaparam(1) , enc(1) , gendsa(1) , genrsa(1) , nseq(1) , openssl(1) , passwd(1) , pkcs12(1), pkcs7(1), pkcs8(1), rand(1) , req(1) , rsa(1) , rsautl(1) , s_client(1) , s_server(1) , smime(1) , spkac(1) , verify(1) , version(1) , x509(1), crypto(3) , ssl(3) HISTORYThe openssl(1) document appeared in OpenSSL
0.9.2. The list-XXX -commands pseudo-commands were added in OpenSSL 0.9.3;
the no-XXX pseudo-commands were added in OpenSSL 0.9.5a. For
notes on the availability of other commands, see their individual
manual pages.
HP Open Source Security for OpenVMS Volume 2:... 
OpenSSL Command Line Interface (CLI) Reference
