Bash - display fingerprint / thumbprint for certificate (DER format)

In this short article, we would like to show how to get a SHA-1 fingerprint from a certificate saved as *.der using openssl under Bash.

Quick solution (SHA-1 fingerprint):

xxxxxxxxxx

cat /path/to/my_certificate.der | openssl sha1 -c

Example output:

xxxxxxxxxx

(stdin)= 21:49:3c:2d:01:40:14:42:da:70:ef:35:9c:e2:dc:ce:24:3d:0e:e4

Where:

• -c adds : separator to fingerprint.
  Without -c parameter openssl returns:
  Copy

  xxxxxxxxxx

   

  1

  (stdin)= 21493c2d01401442da70ef359ce2dcce243d0ee4

Hint: depending on the used program fingerprint is called thumbprint too.

Fingerprint can be calculated with different algorithms: MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, etc.

Example:

xxxxxxxxxx

cat /path/to/my_certificate.der | openssl md5 -c

cat /path/to/my_certificate.der | openssl sha1 -c

cat /path/to/my_certificate.der | openssl sha256 -c