OpenSSL is very popular security library and tool. OpenSSL provides a lot of security algorithms, standards, protocols as library and tool. OpenSSL mainly developed in the Free software and Linux community but this doesn’t mean Windows do not use OpenSSL library and tools. In this tutorial we will learn how to install and configure OpenSSL in Windows operating systems.
Download OpenSSL Binaries
By default OpenSSL binaries for Windows do not provided OpenSSL developers. But binaries are provided by the community compiled in 32 or 64 bit versions. One of the community provided binaries can be download from following link.
By the time writing this tutorial openssl-1.0.2l was the most recent version which can be downloaded from following links.
32 Bit:
https://indy.fulgan.com/SSL/openssl-1.0.2l-i386-win32.zip
64 Bit:
https://indy.fulgan.com/SSL/openssl-1.0.2l-x64_86-win64.zip
Extract OpenSSL
We will use 64 bit version of OpenSSL for this installation. We can extract downloaded file with Windows builtin tool or other 3rd parties like 7zip , Winzip , Winrar etc.
Set PATH For OpenSSL
In order to use openssl libraries and tools we should specify the path ofthe OpenSSL. We will do this by taking following steps.
Computer -> Right Click -> Properties -> Advenced system settings -> Advanced-> Environment Variables
In the System variables part edit Path variable and add the path extracted OpenSSL library resides.
C:\Users\ismail\Downloads\openssl-1.0.2l-x64_86-win64;
Start OpenSSL Shell
Now we can start OpenSSL shell from MS-DOS or Powershell just typing openssl command. This will run openssl.exe in the extracted directory
> openssl
