OCSPCHECK(8)

NAME
ocspcheck - check a certificate for validity against its OCSP responder

SYNOPSIS
ocspcheck [-Nv] [-C CAfile] [-o staplefile] file

DESCRIPTION
The ocspcheck utility validates a PEM format certificate against the OCSP responder encoded in the certificate specified by the file argument. Normally it should be used for checking server certificates and maintaining saved OCSP responses to be used for OCSP stapling.

The options are as follows:

-C CAfile
    Specify a PEM format root certificate bundle to use for the validation of requests. By default no certificates are used beyond those in the certificate chain provided by the file argument.

-N  Do not use a nonce value in the OCSP request, or validate that the nonce was returned in the OCSP response. By default a nonce is always used and validated. The use of this flag is a security risk as it will allow OCSP responses to be replayed. It should not be used unless the OCSP server does not support the use of OCSP nonces.

-o staplefile
    Specify an output filename where the DER encoded response from the OCSP server will be written, if the OCSP response validates. A filename of ‘-’ will write the response to standard output. By default the response is not saved.

-v  Increase verbosity. This flag may be specified multiple times to get more verbose output. The default behaviour is to be silent unless something goes wrong.

EXIT STATUS
The ocspcheck utility exits 0 if the OCSP response validates for the certificate in file and all output is successfully written out. ocspcheck exits >0 if an error occurs or the OCSP response fails to validate.

SEE ALSO
nc(1), tls_config_set_ocsp_staple_file(3), tls_config_set_ocsp_staple_mem(3), httpd(8)

AUTHORS
ocspcheck was written by Bob Beck.

CAVEATS
While ocspcheck could possibly be used in scripts to query responders for server certificates seen on client connections, this is almost always a bad idea. God kills a kitten every time you make an OCSP query from the client side of a TLS connection.

BUGS
ocspcheck will create the output file if it does not exist. On failure a newly created output file will not be removed.