Posts - How to create a certificate(X.509) for Google OAuth

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How to create a certificate(X.509) for Google OAuth

Google OAuth provides a authentication/authorization mecanism for third party apps. If the users grant access to the app, you may use data stored in Google through it.

Even though it is not required you may establish secured connections to Google OAuth by submitting an X.509 certificate. Your requests will submit a signature (created using the private key of the certificate) and Google will use it to verify the request is legitimate.

Creating the certificate is straightforward using Microsoft’s makecert:

makecert –r –a sha1 -pe -n "CN=Test Certificate" -sky exchange -sv testcert.pvk testcert.cer

Notice that I specified the ‘sha1’ algorithm per Google OAuth specifications.

To create the signatures we create a pfx file. (Thanks Patrick Dillion) using pvk2pfx (part of the windows sdk)

pvk2pfx -pvk privatekey.pvk -pi password -spc testcertificatecer -pfx pfxfile.pfx -po password -f