LANGBEIN Root CA

A private certificate authority. It issues certificates to people, not to servers.

What it is for

Certificates from this authority identify a person: they sign email (S/MIME), sign documents, and authenticate to services that ask for a client certificate. The addresses it will issue for are at langbein.org qyber.black qyber.dev.

If you have received a signed message from one of those addresses and your mail client called the signature untrusted, that is because your machine does not have this root. Installing it below is what fixes that, and it is your decision to make, not a formality.

The root

SubjectCN=LANGBEIN Root CA
ExpiresDec 31 23:59:59 2035 GMT
Filesroot.crt · chain.pem · intermediate.crt
Revocationroot.crl_pem · intermediate.crl_pem

Check what you downloaded

This page is served over a certificate from a public authority. That protects the page, not the file you fetch from it. Verify the fingerprint before you install anything:

openssl x509 -in root.crt -noout -fingerprint -sha256

03:12:A7:97:98:12:55:34:C6:27:DC:E1:40:6F:0F:96:6D:0D:B8:9E:D3:EA:76:23:AA:C6:0F:F5:4A:58:EA:BA

If it does not match, character for character, discard the file. Do not install it and then wonder.

What this authority cannot do

It cannot issue a certificate for a website, an IP address, or any host name at all. That is not a promise about how it is operated: the root carries name constraints that exclude every DNS name and every address, so a certificate naming one fails verification in any client that implements RFC 5280 — including the ones you already have. The only names it can sign are mailboxes at the domains listed above.

Its signing key is kept offline.

Installing it

Debian, Ubuntu: put root.crt in /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ and run update-ca-certificates.

Thunderbird, Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Certificates → View Certificates → Authorities → Import, and tick the option for identifying mail users.

macOS: open root.crt in Keychain Access and set it to Always Trust.

Windows: right-click root.crt → Install Certificate → Trusted Root Certification Authorities.