CA Mode

In CA mode, EJBCA receives SCEP PKCSReq requests and sends back the certificate/CRL immediately in a proper SCEP reply message. The SCEP client will send messages directly to the CA, encrypted with the CAs certificate and the CA will authenticate/authorize the request based on username and enrollment code of an end entity pre-created in EJBCA. This mode does not support the 'polling' model, EJBCA uses the direct CA method, where a request is granted or denied immediately.

• The CN part of the DN in the PKCS#10 request, which is part of the SCEP request, will be used as the 'username' when authenticating the request in EJBCA. Create the SCEP request with a CN matching the username registered in EJBCA.

• The challengePassword in the PKCS#10 request, which is part of the SCEP request, will be used as the 'password' when authenticating the request in EJBCA. Create the SCEP request with a challengePassword matching the password registered in EJBCA.

The CA used is either specified by the message or by the property scep.defaultca if no message is sent.

RA Mode

ENTERPRISE This is an EJBCA Enterprise feature.

In RA Mode, EJBCA receives SCEP PKCSReq requests when a user is to be created (or edited). A certificate is returned immediately in a proper SCEP reply message. The RA is authenticated/authorized based on configuration.

The RA Mode requires that the operational mode is set to RA. To specify the RA operational mode, either use the command line to set the property <alias>.operationmode or use the CA UI and go to System Functions → SCEP Configuration and select Operational mode as RA. All the parameters needed to create the new end entity should be set through the command line or the CA UI.

CA ↔ Client Workflow

In accordance with draft-nourse-scep-23, the workflow when using approvals is as follows:

PKCSREQ

Note that the following PKCSREQ graph does not illustrate all fail states.

GetCertInitial

GetCertInital, as mentioned above, is the polling message used to check if a request has received approval.

Note that the following GetCertInital graph does not illustrate all fail states.

Proxying SCEP through an EJBCA RA Using Peers

Like all other protocols in EJBCA, SCEP requests can be proxied to EJBCA over TLS through another EJBCA instance acting as RA in a DMZ. For more information on how to set this up, see the Peer Systems Operations page.

Legacy External RA SCEP Server

ENTERPRISE This is an EJBCA Enterprise feature.

EJBCA supports the SCEP 'polling' RA model using the External RA API. Using this, a SCEP client can send a request to the External RA, and then wait, polling the RA for updates. When the request is processed by the CA, which fetches the pkcs10 request from the External RA, the certificate is sent back to the External RA. When the certificate is complete on the External RA, the RA sends back the SCEP certificate response the next time the SCEP client polls the RA. This feature is very useful to securely insulate the CA from the SCEP clients throughout the network.

Cisco ISE

EJBCA SCEP, using RA mode, has been successfully integrated with Cisco ISE. Configuring EJBCA as a backend CA in Cisco ISE, devices can be enrolled with certificates from EJBCA, through the ISE enrollment interfaces. For more information, see EJBCA and Cisco ISE.

iPhone/iOS

You can enroll certificates for the iOS directly with EJBCA using SCEP.

OpenSCEP

Note that OpenSCEP only supports OpenSSL 0.9.6. Additionally, there is a know limitation that causes it to crash when receiving SCEP responses.

To use the OpenSCEP client to request a certificate from this servlet, use the command:

Where test.key is generated with:

test.req is generated with:

and test.pemreq is generated with:

Simple Scep Client (sscep)

Simple Scep Client. You should only use CN in the users DN (same as for PIX below).

jSCEP

jSCEP uses EJBCA as one of the servers it is tested against.

There is a CLI for jSCEP by Bruno Bonfils. Note that jSCEP and jSCEP CLI need a recent version from Git (jscep-cli 1.2 or later) to work properly in Java 11, otherwise Java 8 must be on the client-side when using the following command.

Test the CLI by creating a SCEP alias and issuing a SCEP request, for example:

The following shows an example SCEP alias, using the default alias name scep, to work with the URL above:

If you use another SCEP alias name, for example myalias, the SCEP URL would be http://localhost:8080/ejbca/publicweb/apply/scep/myalias/pkiclient.exe.

MobileIron

EJBCA has been confirmed to work with the MobileIron MDM system.

Mobile Iron always uses the CA identifier 'MobileIronSCEP' in all SCEP request. SCEP request from MobileIron always start with "operation=GetCACaps&message=MobileIronSCEP". Therefore the CAs name has to be set to 'MobilIronSCEP' to make it work. When set, both RA and CA modes work with MobilIronMDM.

Juniper Networks NetScreen-25/NetScreen-50

To enroll using the Juniper box go to the Web GUI at https://<juniper-ip>/, then click your way to Objects > Certificates. To create a new certificate request:

1. New - enter the DN that your box will receive:
   

   • Name=netscreen.foo.se

   • Organization=PrimeKey

   • Country=SE

   • IP Address=192.168.1.1

   • FQSN=netscreen.foo.se

   Click generate.

2. Automatically enroll to > New CA Server settings. You have to configure if EJBCA should use the direct CA mode or the RA polling mode:
   

   • CGI URL: http://<ra-ip>:8080/scepraserver/scep/<config-alias>/pkiclient.exe

   • CA IDENT: The CA Name in EJBCA, for example ScepCA.

   • Challenge: A password for a pre-registered user in CA mode, or a random password used for polling RA mode.

   Click OK.

3. You can now see the request in Objects > Certificates. If you are using polling RA mode, you can click 'Retrieve' after the request has been approved in the CA and the certificate has been generated.

Cryptlib

When using Cryptlib, the CA certificate must have KeyUsage 'Key Encipherment' in addition to the usual key usage flags. This is reasonable, since SCEP requires the CA to actually encrypt data (which generally is a bad thing, since a special encryption certificate should be used for that).

Key usage for a ScepCA should be: Certificate Sign, CRL Sign, Digital Signature, Key Encipherment

Use the complete path as for the Cisco VPN client below as server name.

Cisco VPN client

To enroll using the Cisco VPN client, use:

• CA URL='http://127.0.0.1:8080/ejbca/publicweb/apply/scep/ALIAS/pkiclient.exe'

• CA Domain=your CAs name in EJBCA

• In the DN screen simply enter the username (as added in EJBCA) as 'Name \[CN\]'

When using an External RA to enroll with the Cisco VPN client, the RA certificate must have KeyUsage SigitalSignature and KeyEncipherment for the client to accept the CA certificates. However, to locate the RA encryption certificate, only KeyEncipherment can be set, which makes things quite complicated.

The conclusion is that RA enrollment does not work with Cisco VPN client.

AutoSscep

EJBCA has been tested successfully with AutoSscep for enrollment against the CA and the External RA SCEP service.

Instructions:

1. Download and build AutoSscep (make).

2. Create a configuration file, ejbca.conf, as the example below.

3. Create a user in EJBCA with username (common name) and DN exactly as entered in the configuration file.

4. Run 'autosscep ejbca.conf'.

Sample configuration file, ejbca.conf:

AutoSscep also handles enrolling against an RA, where the RA first sends a PENDING response which the request is being processed. After processing (by the CA) you simply run the AutoSscep client again to pick up the generated certificate.

In order to enroll against the External RA SCEP Server in EJBCA, change the CA part of the configuration file to use the SCEP RA servers certificate for signing and encrypting the messages instead of the CAs, and to use the URL to the RA. The SCEP RA certificate is the end entity certificate issued to the External RA SCEP server (the keystore is usually called scepraserver.p12).

Cisco PIX/3000

Cisco PIX and Cisco 3000 is supported. The following description applies for PIX:

• Configure JBoss to use port 80 to enroll with PIX: APPSRV_HOME/server/default/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat50.sar/service.xml (or similar depending on version). You must run as root to use port 80.

• EJBCA supports the ca mode of enrollment for pix, not ra. For ra and polling enrollment, use the External RA API SCEP module.

• The certificate profile used by the SCEP CA must include the key usages KeyEncipherment and DataEncipherment, otherwise PIX will not be able to verify/decrypt encrypted SCEP messages. This is not in the default certificate profile for CAs. Create a new certificate profile before creating the Scep CA, using ROOTCA as template for the new certificate profile.

• When enrolling for certificate using SCEP, with for example a Cisco PIX, it is a ca_nickname. This nickname should be the CA-name as defined when creating the CA in EJBCA. For example vpnca.

• Only use lower-case names when creating the CA in EJBCA, since PIX will change the CA name VpnCA to vpnca when enrolling.

• The username in EJBCA must be the name the PIX identifies itself with name.domain, for example pix.primekey.com.

• The end-entity DN must include the DN components CN and unstructuredName, ex "CN=pix.primekey.com, unstructuredName=pix.primekey.com". You can also include O, C etc in the certificate. A normal DN for a PIX is "CN=pix.primekey.com,unstructuredName=pix.primekey.com,O=PrimeKey,C=SE".

• Certificates used for PIX MUST include the DN component unstructuredName (fqdn) and could also include unstructuredAddress (ip) being the IP-address of the PIX.

• The certificate used on the Cisco PIX MUST have a SubjectAltName field dNSName, matching the DN component unstructuredName. This is needed in order for Cisco VPN clients to connect to the PIX. The DNS Name field is not necessary for the PIX to enroll perfectly with EJBCA, only for the client to be able to connect.

• Certificates used for PIX may also use the SubjectAltName iPAddress matching the DN component unstructuredAddress, but it is not necessary.

• Cisco does not support use of the Domain Component, DC, attribute in DNs, and it is recommended not to use the attribute.

• KeyUsage should include Digital Signature and Key Encipherment, the EJBCA defaults work fine.

• When the Cisco VPN-client (above) connects to the PIX, the ou part of the clients DN must match a Vpngroup you have specified, otherwise the connection will fail.

• Cisco PIX (older) needs the SCEP response messages to use MD5 as hash algorithm, not SHA1, this is handled by EJBCA automatically.
  
  

The following displays examples of the enrollment steps: