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@marians
Last active May 19, 2024 09:03
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How to install CA certificates and PKCS12 key bundles on different platforms

We install certutil and pk12util if necessary:

sudo apt install libnss3-tools

On Linux, Chromium uses the NSS Shared DB. Check if you have the ~/.pki/nssdb directory:

ls $HOME/.pki/nssdb

Assuming that your CA file to import is in path/to/ca.crt, do this to install a CA certificate:

certutil -A \
  -n "Name of certificate" \
  -t "TC,," \
  -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb \
  -i path/to/ca.crt

We import the PKCS12 key bundle like this:

pk12util -i path/to/bundle.p12 -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -W mypassword

Now restart Chromium.

See https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/linux_cert_management.md

Ubuntu Linux 16.04

Might also work for other Debian-based distributions.

We install certutil and pk12util if necessary:

sudo apt install libnss3-tools

Find the path of your Firefox profile. This should ideally yield one path entry:

find ~/.mozilla/firefox -name "cert8.db"

Before you proceed, make sure Firefox is not running. This is important!

Assuming that your DB path is ~/.mozilla/firefox/6eozd6kv.default/cert8.db and your CA file to import is in path/to/ca.crt, do this to install the CA certificate:

certutil -A \
  -n "Name of certificate" \
  -t "TC,," \
  -d ~/.mozilla/firefox/6eozd6kv.default \
  -i path/to/ca.crt

We import the PKCS12 key bundle like this:

pk12util -i path/to/bundle.p12 -d ~/.mozilla/firefox/6eozd6kv.default -W mypassword

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1435000/programmatically-install-certificate-into-mozilla https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/NSS/Tools/certutil

To add a CA certificate:

security add-trusted-cert -r trustRoot path/to/ca.crt

You'll need a command prompt with Administrator permissions.

  1. Use the search input next to the Windows menu button to search for "cmd".
  2. Right-click the "Command Prompt" entry and select the context menu item "Run as administrator".

Installing the CA certificate from path\to\ca.crt:

certutil.exe -addstore "Root" path\to\ca.crt

Assuming that your PKCS12 bundle is in path\to\bundle.p12, run this command:

certutil.exe -p password -user -importPFX path\to\bundle.p12
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