Question

I have received a X509 certificate (one .cer file), I can decode it, so no problems on that. Now I want to sign a request with this certificate in node, but I can’t get this to work:

var https = require("https");
var fs = require("fs");

var options = {
    host: 'management.core.windows.net',
    path: '/my-subscription-id/services/hostedservices',
    port: 443,
    method: 'GET',
    cert: fs.readFileSync("./SSLDevCert.cer"),
    agent: false
};

var req = https.request(options, function(res) {
    console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode);
    console.log("headers: ", res.headers);

    res.on('data', function(d) {
        process.stdout.write(d);
    });
});

This fails with

Error: error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line
at Object.createCredentials (crypto.js:72:31)
at Object.connect (tls.js:857:27)
at Agent._getConnection (https.js:61:15)
at Agent._establishNewConnection (http.js:1183:21)

Doing the same in C# works fine:

var req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(string.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices", "my-subscription-id"));
req.ClientCertificates.Add(new X509Certificate2(File.ReadAllBytes("./SSLDevCert.cer"));
var resp = req.GetResponse();

Answer 1

A follow up on this:

Only .cer file probably means that the private key is in the certificate (well that’s the case with the Azure certs), you will have to transform in a PEM file (that starts with ----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----) and then do a request with:

var key = fs.readFileSync("./key.pem");
var options = {
    cert: key,
    key: key
}

Getting the private key from the file can be a bit tricky, but this worked on Azure certificates, so it might help any of you:

openssl pkcs12 -in ' + file + ' -nodes -passin pass:

(note the empty pass argument)