SAML Keys

Most if not all Identity Providers allow for encryption and signing of SAML assertions. It is considered good-practice for these to be different, but for development purposes, using the same pair is usually sufficient.

A private key and certificate pair can be generated by using openssl. The following command will generate the private key and certificate as mykey.key and mycert.crt files in the current directory:

openssl req -x509 -sha256 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout mykey.key -out mycert.crt

OpenSSL will prompt you to fill in details, similar to below.

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You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
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Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:GB
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Kent
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Sevenoaks
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Asterias
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Engineering
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:jacquesg.asteri.as
Email Address []:jacques.germishuys@asterias.io

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