Introduction

This document describes the procedure to generate certificates which have to be uploaded with every fresh installation of AMP Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). With the introduction of AMP Private Cloud 3.X, hostnames and certificate/key pairs are required for all of the following services:

• Administration Portal
• Authentication (new in Private Cloud 3.X)
• FireAMP Console
• Disposition Server
• Disposition Server - Extended Protocol
• Disposition Update Service
• Firepower Management Center

Here, we will discuss a quick way to generate and upload the required certificates. You may tweak each of the parameters, including the hashing algorithm, key size, and others, as per your organization's policy, and your mechanism of generating these certificates might not match with what is detailed here.

Prerequisites

No, it is not currently possible that a public key of a traditional public-key cryptosystem (not based on communication with some server) can be (re-)generated from something that a typical human is willing to memorize (perhaps, 80 bit worth of entropy, about 24 digits, or 3 phone numbers), much less from a passphrase a typical human can choose and no other information. IGolder does not log any activity done on this page. We created this tool for you to benefit PGP encryption for contacting us, contacting any iGolder member having a public PGP key, or contacting your friends. IGolder respects your privacy and does not log nor monitors any activity (key creation) done on this web page. Generate a new secret key. To generate the key, follow the same process as the one for generating a new private key. You use the Security library in each case. Import encrypted keys more securely. Android 9 (API level 28) and higher allow you to import encrypted keys securely into the Keystore using an ASN.1‑encoded key format.

Components Used

1. It uses public key cryptography to create a different, and more secure approach to authenticating your identity and rights to access a server or resource. In a nutshell, you will generate a public and private key pair. The public key will be placed on the server by your system administrator, giving you access.
2. To generate an SSH private/public key pair using the ssh-keygen command and then copy the public key to your clipboard for use, complete the following steps: On your local computer, open a command-prompt window. Ensure you do not already have a public key saved to your computer.

Cisco recommends that you have knowledge of these topics:

• Windows Server 2008 onwards
• AMP Private Cloud installation
• Public Key Infrastructure

Requirements

The information in this document is based on these software and hardware versions:

• Windows Server 2008
• CentOS 7
• AMP Virtual Private Cloud 3.0.2

Warning: The procedure mentioned below can vary as per your CA server configuration. It is expected that the CA server of your choice is already provisioned and the configuration of the same has been completed. The following technote just describes an example of generating the certificates and Cisco TAC will not be involved in troubleshooting issues related to certificate generation and/or CA server issues of any kind.

Generate Certificates on Window Server

Ensure that the following roles are installed and configured on your Windows Server.

• Active Directory Certificate Services
• Certification Authority
• Certification Authority Web Enrollment
• Online Responder
• Certificate Enrollment Web Service
• Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service
• Active Directory Domain Services
• DNS Servers
• Web Server (IIS)

Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

Step 1. Navigate to MMC console, and add the Certificates snap-in for your computer account as shown in the image here.

Step 2. Drill down Certificates (Local Computer) > Personal > Certificates.

Step 3. Right click on the empty space and select All Tasks > Advanced Operations > Create Custom Request

Step 4. Click Next at the Enrollment window.

Step 5. Select your certificate enrollment policy and click Next.

Step 6. Choose the template as Web Server and click Next.

Step 7. If your 'Web Server' template has been configured correctly and is available for enrollment, you will see the status as 'Available' here. Click 'Details' to expand click on Properties.

Step 8. At a minimum, add the CN and DNS attributes. The rest of the attributes can be added as per your security requirements.

Step 9. Optionally, give a Friendly Name under the General tab.

Step 10. Click on the PrivateKey tab and ensure that you're enabling Make private key exportable under the Key Options section.

Step 11. Finally, click on OK. This should lead you to the Certificate Enrollment dialog from where you can click on Next.

Step 12. Browse to a location to save the .req file which will be submitted to the CA server for signing.

Submitting the CSR to the CA and generating the certificate

Step 1. Navigate to your MS AD Certificate Services Web Page as below and click 'Request a Certificate'

Step 2. Click on the advanced certificate request link.

Step 3. Click on Submit a certificate request by using a base-64-encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file.

Step 4. Open the contents of the previously saved .req file (CSR) via Notepad. Copy the contents and paste it here. Ensure that the Certificate Template is selected as Web Server

Step 5. Finally, click on Submit.

Step 6. At this point, you should be able to Download the certificate as shown in the image here.

Exporting the Private Key and converting to PEM format

Step 1. Install the certificate into your Certificate Store by opening the .cer file and clicking on Install Certificate.

Step 2. Navigate to the MMC snap-in that was selected earlier.

Step 3. Navigate to the store where the certificate was installed.

Step 4. Right click the correct certificate, select All Tasks > Export.

Step 5. At the Certificate Export Wizard, confirm to export the private key as shown in the image.

Step 6. Enter a password and click Next to save the private key on your disk.

Step 7. This will save the private key in .PFX format, however, this needs to be converted to .PEM format to use this with AMP VPC.

Step 8. Install OpenSSL libraries from here:https://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Binaries

Step 9. Open a command prompt window and change to the directory where you installed OpenSSL.

Step 10. Run the following command to extract the private key and save it to a new file: (If your PFX file is not in the same path as where the OpenSSL library is stored, you will have to specify the exact path along with the filename)

Step 11. Now run the following command to also extract the public cert and save it to a new file:

Generate Certificate on Linux Server

Ensure that the Linux server that you're trying to generate the required certificates has the OpenSSL libraries installed. Verifying if this and the procedure listed below will vary from the Linux distribution that you're running. This portion has been documented, as done on a CentOS 7 server.

Generate Self Signed RootCA

Step 1. Generate the Private Key for Root CA certificate

Step 2. Generate the CA certificate

Generate a certificate for each service

Create the certificate for Authentication, Console, Disposition, Disposition-Extended, Update server, Firepower Management Center(FMC) service as per the DNS name entry. You need to repeat below certificate generate process for each service (Authentication, Console etc.)

Generate Private key

Generate Public Key From Private

Replace the <example.key> with actual certificate key such as Auth-Cert.key.

Generate CSR

Replace the <example.csr> with actual certificate CSR such as Auth-Cert.csr

Generate Certificate

Replace <example.csr>, <example.crt> with actual certificate CSR and certificate name

Adding The Certificates to AMP VPC

Step 1. Once the certificates are generated from any of the above methods, upload the corresponding certificate for each of the services. If they have been generated correctly, all the check marks are enabled as seen in the image here.

Verify

Symmetric Key

There is currently no verification procedure available for this configuration.

Troubleshoot

There is currently no specific troubleshooting information available for this configuration.