Easy-rsa

The first step when setting up OpenVPN is to create a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). In summary, this consists of:

• a public master Certificate Authority (CA) certificate and a private key;
• a separate public certificate and private key pair for each server;
• a separate public certificate and private key pair for each client.

One can think of the key-based authentication in terms similar to that of how SSH keys work with the added layer of a signing authority (the CA). OpenVPN relies on a bidirectional authentication strategy, so the client must authenticate the server's certificate and in parallel, the server must authenticate the client's certificate. This is accomplished by the 3rd party's signature (the CA) on both the client and server certificates. Once this is established, further checks are performed before the authentication is complete.

Note: The process outlined below requires users to securely transfer private key files to/from machines. For the purposes of this guide, using scp is shown, but readers may employ alternative methods as well. Since the Parabola default is to deny the root user over ssh, using scp requires transferring ownership of the files to be exported to a non-root user called foo throughout the guide.

Note: All commands in the guide are expected to be run as the root user unless otherwise indicated in the text. To make code snippets copy/paste friendly to readers, commands are not prefixed.

1 Certificate Authority (CA)

For security purposes, it is recommended that the CA machine be separate from the machine running OpenVPN.

On the CA machine, install easy-rsa, initialize a new PKI and generate a CA keypair that will be used to sign certificates:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa init-pki
easyrsa build-ca

2 OpenVPN server files

A functional OpenVPN server requires the following (in alphabetical order):

1. The CA's public certificate
2. The Diffie-Hellman (DH) parameters file (needed for TLS mode which is recommended).
3. The server key pair (a public certificate and a private key).
4. The Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) key.

Upon completing the steps outlined in this article, users will have generated the following files on the server:

1. /etc/openvpn/ca.crt
2. /etc/openvpn/dh.pem
3. /etc/openvpn/servername.crt and /etc/openvpn/servername.key
4. /etc/openvpn/ta.key

2.1 CA public certificate

The CA public certificate /etc/easy-rsa/pki/ca.crt generated in the previous step needs to be copied over to the machine that will be running OpenVPN.

On the CA machine:

cp /etc/easy-rsa/pki/ca.crt /tmp
chown foo /tmp/ca.crt

$ scp /tmp/ca.crt foo@hostname-of-openvpn-server:/tmp

On the OpenVPN server machine:

mv /tmp/ca.crt /etc/openvpn
chown root:root /etc/openvpn/ca.crt

2.2 Server certificate and private key

On the OpenVPN server machine, install easy-rsa and generate a key pair for the server:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa init-pki
easyrsa gen-req servername nopass
cp /etc/easy-rsa/pki/private/servername.key /etc/openvpn

This will create two files: /etc/easy-rsa/pki/reqs/servername.req /etc/easy-rsa/pki/private/servername.key

2.3 Diffie-Hellman (DH) parameters file

On the OpenVPN server machine, create the initial dh.pem file:

openssl dhparam -out /etc/openvpn/dh.pem 2048

Note: Although values higher than 2048 (4096 for example) may be used, they take considerably more time to generate and offer little benefit in security.

2.4 Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) key

On the OpenVPN server machine, create the HMAC key:

openvpn --genkey --secret /etc/openvpn/ta.key

This will be used to add an additional HMAC signature to all SSL/TLS handshake packets. In addition any UDP packet not having the correct HMAC signature will be immediately dropped, protecting against:

• Portscanning.
• DOS attacks on the OpenVPN UDP port.
• SSL/TLS handshake initiations from unauthorized machines.
• Any eventual buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the SSL/TLS implementation.

3 OpenVPN client files

3.1 Client certificate and private key

Any machine can generate client files provided that easy-rsa is installed.

If the pki is not initialized, do so via:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa init-pki

Generate the client key and certificate:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa gen-req client1 nopass

This will create two files: /etc/easy-rsa/pki/reqs/client1.req /etc/easy-rsa/pki/private/client1.key

The gen-req set can be repeated as many times as needed for additional clients.

4 Sign the certificates and pass them back to the server and clients

4.1 Obtain and sign the certificates on the CA

The server and client(s) certificates need to be signed by the CA then transferred back to the OpenVPN server/client(s).

On the OpenVPN server (or the box used to generate the certificate/key pairs):

cp /etc/easy-rsa/pki/reqs/*.req /tmp
chown foo /tmp/*.req

Securely transfer the files to the CA machine for signing:

$ scp /tmp/*.req foo@hostname-of-CA:/tmp

On the CA machine, import and sign the certificate requests:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa import-req /tmp/servername.req servername
easyrsa import-req /tmp/client1.req client1
easyrsa sign-req server servername
easyrsa sign-req client client1

This will create the following signed certificates which can be transferred back to their respective machines: /etc/easy-rsa/pki/issued/servername.crt /etc/easy-rsa/pki/issued/client1.crt

The leftover .req files can be safely deleted:

rm -f /tmp/*.req

4.2 Pass the signed certificates back to the server and client(s)

On the CA machine, copy the signed certificates and transfer them to the server/client(s):

cp /etc/easy-rsa/pki/issued/*.crt /tmp
chown foo /tmp/*.crt
$ scp /tmp/*.crt foo@hostname-of-openvpn_server:/tmp

On the OpenVPN server, move the certificates in place and reassign ownership:

mv /tmp/servername.crt /etc/openvpn
chown root:root /etc/openvpn/servername.crt

The signed client certificate can be stored anywhere since it will be used in the subsequent step of preparing the ovpn client profile file.

mkdir /etc/easy-rsa/pki/signed
mv /tmp/client1.crt /etc/easy-rsa/pki/signed

5 Revoking certificates and alerting the OpenVPN server

5.1 Revoke a certificate

Over time, it may become necessary to revoke a certificate thus denying access to the affected user(s). This example revokes the "client1" certificate.

On the CA machine:

cd /etc/easy-rsa
easyrsa revoke client1
easyrsa gen-crl

This will produce the CRL file /etc/easy-rsa/pki/crl.pem that needs to be transferred to the OpenVPN server and made active there.

5.2 Alert the OpenVPN server

On the CA machine:

cp /etc/easy-rsa/pki/crl.pem /tmp
chown foo /tmp/crl.pem

On the OpenVPN machine, copy crl.pem and inform the server to read it:

mv /tmp/crl.pem /etc/openvpn
chown root:root /etc/openvpn/crl.pem

Edit /etc/openvpn/server.conf uncommenting the crl-verify directive, then restart openvpn@server.service to re-read it:

/etc/openvpn/server.conf

.
crl-verify /etc/openvpn/crl.pem
.

6 See also

6.1 Upstream docs

• README.quickstart.
• EASYRSA-Advanced.

7 Acknowledgement

This wiki article is based on ArchWiki. We may have removed non-FSDG bits from it.