SimpleCA

SimpleCA is an easy-to-use program that gives a typical sysadmin who needs to create certificates an easy interface. It was designed by the VPN Consortium to help VPNC members provide a free and easy-to-use certificate authority (CA) package to their customers. Certificate use is becoming more important in IPsec systems and even some trusted VPN systems, so having a simple and flexible CA system is important for the entire VPN industry.

The SimpleCA package has fewer features and options than many CA packages. All options to the program are on the command-line and/or in a config file, and comes with (hopefully) sensible defaults so that the sysadmin can start writing certs without knowing much. The full instructions for using SimpleCA show how easy it is to use.

SimpleCA uses the highly-respected cryptlib toolkit as its underlying cryptographic engine.

SimpleCA is freely available to everyone, not just VPNC members. You should read the SimpleCA copyright notice before using the software.

Pre-built SimpleCA binaries

For Linux, download dist-simpleca-linux.tgz. This contains the binary program (called simpleca-linux), as well as the Instructions and Copyright files.

For FreeBSD, download dist-simpleca-freebsd-4.tgz. This contains the binary program (called simpleca-freebsd), as well as the Instructions and Copyright files.

For Windows, download dist-simpleca-windows.zip. This contains two binaries, simpleca.exe and cl32.dll. These both need to be in the same directory in order to run simpleca.exe. This also includes the Instructions and Copyright files.

Building SimpleCA from source

The SimpleCA source tarball consists of five files:

Building -- explains how to build SimpleCA and cryptlib
Copyright -- the BSDish copyright statement for SimpleCA
Instructions -- how to use SimpleCA
Makefile -- for running make
simpleca.c -- the source file

The MD5s for the above distributions are:

MD5 (dist-simpleca-freebsd-4.tgz) = 1ea117535b66f45138179abddf9e327d
MD5 (dist-simpleca-linux.tgz) = 4476c8296ffa8eb7c56ce5549c0e4f70
MD5 (dist-simpleca-windows.zip) = 93b8bd52d9079cc9b31b3db8bde18406
MD5 (source-simpleca.tgz) = ffddb66bd8f1f7ba075037cd19970cab

SimpleCA is sponsored by the VPN Consortium. If you have any questions about VPNC membership, questions about SimpleCA, or suggestions for improvments to SimpleCA, please send them to paul.hoffman@vpnc.org.