Export client certificate from Let's Encrypt certificates

Question

I'm running Debian and have certbot for creating Let's Encrypt certificate.

I act as client towards a TLS server, and needs to handover my client certificate for approval.

I've got the following files generated by certbot:

/etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/privkey.pem
/etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/fullchain.pem
/etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/chain.pem

Which certificate should I handover, and is it safe to share public?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 09 '18 at 13:31

You need to keep /etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/privkey.pem private as it contains the private key for your certificate.

You can hand out one ofthese two files:

/etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/chain.pem
/etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/fullchain.pem

You might want to share the /etc/letsencrypt/live/my-client-server-domain/fullchain.pem as it contains intemediate certificates if those were used by Let's Encrypt. The recipient can extract your certificate from it in case it is needed.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '18 at 13:33

Use the certbot certificates sub command to display your certificate files if you don't exactly know which file(s) you need. You can use the -d [hostname] option if you have more than hostname/domainname configured:

certbot certificates -d www.example.com

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Found the following matching certs:

  Certificate Name: server.example.com
    Domains: server.example.com mail.example.com www.example.com example.com
    Expiry Date: 2018-09-30 12:45:28+00:00 (VALID: 82 days)
    Certificate Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/server.example.com/fullchain.pem   <====
    Private Key Path: /etc/letsencrypt/live/server.example.com/privkey.pem


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In any public key cryptography you only need to keep the aptly named "Private Key" data private and secure, and you can (and usually must) share the public key/certificate freely, so share the fullchain.pem file from what certbot calls the "certificate path".

Export client certificate from Let's Encrypt certificates

2 Answers2