win-ca

Get Windows System Root certificates for Node.js.

Rationale

Unlike Ruby, Node.js on Windows allows HTTPS requests out-of-box. But it is implemented in a rather bizzare way:

Node uses a statically compiled, manually updated, hardcoded list of certificate authorities, rather than relying on the system's trust store... Read more

It's very strange behavour under any OS, but Windows differs from most of them by having its own trust store, fully incompatible with OpenSSL.

This package is intended to fetch Root CAs from Windows' store (Trusted Root Certification Authorities) and make them available to Node.js application with minimal efforts.

Advantages

• No internet access is required at all
• Windows store is updated automatically (in most modern environments)
• Manually installed Root certificates are used
• Enterpise trusted certificates (GPO etc.) are made available too

Usage

Just say npm install --save win-ca and then call require('win-ca').

It is safe to use it under other OSes (not M$ Windows).

API

After require('win-ca') Windows' Root CAs are found, deduplicated and installed to https.globalAgent.options.ca so they are automatically used for all requests with Node.js' https module.

For use in other places, these certificates are also available via .all() method (in node-forge's format).

let ca = require('win-ca')
let forge = require('node-forge')

for (let crt of ca.all())
  console.log(forge.pki.certificateToPem(crt))

Unfortunately, node-forge at the time of writing is unable to parse non-RSA certificates (namely, ECC certificates becoming more popular). If your Trusted Root Certification Authorities store contains modern certificates, .all() method will throw exception.

To fix this, one can pass format parameter to .all method:

let ca = require('win-ca')

for (let crt of ca.all(ca.der2.pem))
  console.log(crt)

Available values for format are:

Constant	Value	Meaning
der2.der	0	DER-format (binary, Node's Buffer)
der2.pem	1	PEM-format (text, Base64-encoded)
der2.txt	2	PEM-format plus some info as text
der2.asn1	3	ASN.1-parsed certificate
*	*	Certificate in node-forge format (RSA only)

One can enumerate Root CAs himself using .each() method:

let ca = require('win-ca')

ca.each(crt=>
  console.log(forge.pki.certificateToPem(crt)))

But this list may contain duplicates.

Asynchronous enumeration is provided via .async() method:

let ca = require('win-ca')

ca.each.async((error, crt)=> {
  if (error) throw error;
  if(crt)
    console.log(forge.pki.certificateToPem(crt))
  else
    console.log("That's all folks!")
})

Both .each and .each.async methods accept format as the first parameter.

Finally, win-ca saves fetched ceritificates to disk for use by other software. Path to folder containing all the certificates is available as require('win-ca').path. Environment variable SSL_CERT_DIR is set to point at it, so OpenSSL-based software will use it automatically. The layout of that folder mimics that of OpenSSL's c_rehash utility.

In addition, file roots.pem is placed in the said folder. It contains all root certificates in PEM format concatenated together. It can also be used by most cryptographic software. In particular, OpenSSL will take it into account if one say

set SSL_CERT_FILE = %SSL_CERT_DIR%\roots.pem

The folder is likely to be located inside win-ca module folder, but it is sometimes not writable to current process (see UAC etc.). In the latter case, win-ca will try to save PEM-files inside user profile and if this also fails, no files will be saved but root certificates will be still available programmatically.

Availability

Current version uses N-API, so it can be used in Node.js versions with N-API support, i.e. v6 and all versions starting from v8.

Thanks to N-API, it is possible to precompile Windows DLL and save it to package, so no compilation is needed at installation time.

For other Node.js versions (v4, 5 or 7) speciall fallback utility is called in the background to fetch the list anyway.

Electron

Electron uses its own N-API, so if it is detected, the same fallback is used as for old Node.js.

VSCode extension

Special extension for VSCode was created to import win-ca in context of VSCode's Extension Host.

Since all VSCode extensions share the same process, root certificates imported by one of them are immediately available to others. This can allow VSCode to connect to (properly configured) intranet sites from Windows machines.

Building

• npm install
• npm run pretest
• npm run nvm$
• npm publish

This builds both x86 and x64 versions with N-API support. For older Node.js versions standalone binary utility is built.

See also

• OpenSSL::Win::Root for Ruby version
• mac-ca for Mac OS version

Credits

Uses node-forge and used to use node-ffi-napi (ancestor of node-ffi).