PKCS10

PKCS #10 (PKCS10) is the most common Certificate Signing Request (CSR) format. The term CSR often implies PKCS10 format, though other CSR formats exist.

A PKCS10 file may be encoded in PEM format, DER format, or possibly some other format.

Identification
A PEM-encoded PKCS10 file is plain text, with base64-encoded payload data. It contains a line that reads " " or " ".

Examples
To view the contents of a PEM-encoded PKCS10 file, using OpenSSL: openssl req -noout -text -in example.csr

To generate a new PKCS10 file, first generate a private key, then: openssl req -new -key example.key -out example.csr

Specifications

 * RFC 2986: PKCS #10: Certification Request Syntax Specification, Version 1.7
 * RFC 2314: PKCS #10, Version 1.5 (obsolete)
 * RFC 5967: The application/pkcs10 Media Type

Software

 * OpenSSL
 * GnuTLS

Links

 * Wikipedia: Certificate signing request