X.509 Certificate Based Authentication

X.509 Certificate chain:

Step 1. Prepare your server and certificate chain

ThingsBoard Team has already provisioned a valid certificate for ThingsBoard Cloud.

Once provisioned, you should prepare a CA root certificate in pem format. This certificate will be used by mqtt client to validate the server certificate. Save the CA root certificate to your working directory as “ca-root.pem”. An example of CA root certificate for mqtt.thingsboard.cloud is located here.

Step 2. Generate Client certificate chain

We should generate a certificate chain with reasonable Common Names (CNs). We will use the intermediate certificate to sign certificates for our devices. For example, the certificate chain CNs might be the following:

• Root certificate CN: company-name.com;
• Intermediate certificate: device-group-name.company-name.com;
• Device certificate: device-name.device-group-name.company-name.com;

Use the following commands to generate the self-signed private keys, certificate signing requests, and x509 certificates for each chain level. The commands are based on the OpenSSL tool, which is most likely already installed on your workstation:

Step 2.1 Generate root certificate

Generate the Root certificate and private key, use the following command. Don’t forget to put the correct CN when prompted:

1
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout rootKey.pem -out rootCert.pem -sha256 -days 365 -nodes

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Generating a RSA private key
writing new private key to 'rootKey.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:company.com
Email Address []:

Step 2.2 Generate intermediate certificate

To generate the intermediate key and certificate request, use the following command. Don’t forget to put the correct CN when prompted:

1
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout intermediateKey.pem -out intermediate.csr -sha256 -nodes

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Generating a RSA private key
writing new private key to 'intermediateKey.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:group.company.com
Email Address []:

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:

To generate the intermediate certificate, use the following command. Don’t forget to put the correct CN when prompted:

1
openssl x509 -req -in intermediate.csr -out intermediateCert.pem -CA rootCert.pem -CAkey rootKey.pem -days 365 -sha256 -CAcreateserial

1
2
3
Signature ok
subject=C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = group.company.com
Getting CA Private Key

Step 2.3 Generate device certificate

To generate the device certificate, use the following command. Don’t forget to put the correct CN when prompted:

1
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout deviceKey.pem -out device.csr -sha256 -nodes

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Generating a RSA private key
writing new private key to 'deviceKey.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:device.group.company.com
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:
Email Address []:

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:

To generate the intermediate certificate, use the following command. Don’t forget to put the correct CN when prompted:

1
openssl x509 -req -in device.csr -out deviceCert.pem -CA intermediateCert.pem -CAkey intermediateKey.pem -days 365 -sha256 -CAcreateserial

1
2
3
Signature ok
subject=C = AU, ST = Some-State, O = Internet Widgits Pty Ltd, CN = device.group.company.com
Getting CA Private Key

Finally, you need to concatenate certificates into a chain starting from the device certificate till the root.

1
cat deviceCert.pem intermediateCert.pem rootCert.pem > chain.pem

The output of the commands will be private keys and certificates for each level of chain. In the next steps we will use device key file deviceKey.pem and a chain of certificates chain.pem.

Step 3. Provision Client Intermediate Public Key as Device Profile X509 provision strategy

Go to ThingsBoard Web UI -> Profiles -> Device profiles -> Your Device profile -> Device provisioning. Select X.509 Certificates Chain provision strategy, insert the contents of intermediateCert.pem file and regular expression pattern to fetch common name from deviceCert.pem, choose allow to create new devices or not and click save. Alternatively, the same can be done through the REST API.

Step 4. Test the connection

Execute the following command to upload temperature readings to ThingsBoard Cloud using secure channel:

1
2
mosquitto_pub --cafile ca-root.pem -d -q 1 -h "mqtt.thingsboard.cloud" -p "8883" \
-t "v1/devices/me/telemetry" --key deviceKey.pem --cert chain.pem -m {"temperature":25}

Don’t forget to replace YOUR_TB_HOST with the host of your ThingsBoard instance.

X.509 Certificate:

Step 1. Prepare your server and certificate chain

ThingsBoard Team has already provisioned a valid certificate for ThingsBoard Cloud.

Once provisioned, you should prepare a CA root certificate in pem format. This certificate will be used by mqtt client to validate the server certificate. Save the CA root certificate to your working directory as “ca-root.pem”. An example of CA root certificate for mqtt.thingsboard.cloud is located here.

Step 2. Generate Client certificate

Use the following command to generate the self-signed private key and x509 certificate. The command is based on the openssl tool which is most likely already installed on your workstation:

To generate the RSA based key and certificate, use:

1
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -sha256 -days 365 -nodes

To generate the EC based key and certificate, use:

1
2
openssl ecparam -out key.pem -name prime256v1 -genkey
openssl req -new -key key.pem -x509 -nodes -days 365 -out cert.pem 

The output of the command will be a private key file key.pem and a public certificate cert.pem. We will use them in next steps.

Step 3. Provision Client Public Key as Device Credentials

Go to ThingsBoard Web UI -> Entities -> Devices -> Your Device -> Manage credentials. Select X.509 Certificate device credentials, insert the contents of cert.pem file and click save. Alternatively, the same can be done through the REST API.

Step 4. Test the connection

Execute the following command to upload temperature readings to ThingsBoard Cloud using secure channel:

1
2
mosquitto_pub --cafile ca-root.pem -d -q 1 -h "mqtt.thingsboard.cloud" -p "8883" \
-t "v1/devices/me/telemetry" --key key.pem --cert cert.pem -m {"temperature":25}

Don’t forget to replace YOUR_TB_HOST with the host of your ThingsBoard instance.