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mat
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Any CA certificate, no matter if it's a root or an intermediate, must have the keyCertSign extension. If you want to sign a revocation list (CRL) with the CA certificate as well (you usually do want that), than you have to add cRLSign as well. Any other keyUsages can and should be avoided for CA certificates.

The list of values accepted by openssl is documented here.

For end-entity certificates you can use any of the other keyUsages as documented by openssl, just make sure you do not include the CA-extensions mentioned above. From a security perspective, you should not use more keyUsages then neccesary (especially it is advised to use seperate certificates for signing and encription), but that is not a strict requirement.

Note that apart from the classic keyUsages, there is also the extendedKeyUsage (EKU) extension, which is not limited to predefined values in the RFC but can theoretically hold any OID you like. Known values are for instance for certificates to sign timestamps or OCSP responses.

You don't need to use nsCertType. Those, along with all the other ns* extensions, where defined by Netscape ages ago and should not be used anymore. You probably won't find any software around still using them.

A for other extensions, the only thing that is absoluetely required is the basicConstraints extension which has a boolean CA flag which you must set accordingly. The authorityKeyIdentifier and subjectkeyIdentifier extensions are also highly recommended.

mat
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