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Is there any way to extract a private key from a PEM file without the openssl tool on Windows?

Windows MMC won't do the trick as I cannot export to PKCS#12 due to my work laptop security restrictions and looks like certutil cannot do this either or access to PowerShell.

I even tried Python, but my work laptop is unable to obtain the cryptography module to load X509.

And I cannot get access to a Unix server for another week to access the openssl tool......running outta ideas!

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  • "from a PEM file" - what is the content of the PEM? What tools you have available? What do you want to have at the end (i.e. extract and then store it in what format)? "unable to obtain the cryptography module to load X509" - this would not even help since the private key is not inside the X509 certificate. Only the public key is in the certificate. So if you just have the certificate then no tool will help you to extract the private key, not even openssl.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commentedyesterday
  • I have the PEM, PCKS#7, CER, DER........inside the PEM there is no private key I can view, how can I extract the private key.pem from this PEM file and also the CRT, so I can install onto multiple Firewall devices, as this signed cert has lots of SAN entries. And because the CSR was created from 1 firewall I need the key and cert file to install on the other firewalls (SANs)
    – mortirolo
    Commentedyesterday

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It looks like you only have the certificate in various formats. It is impossible to extract the private key from the certificate, since it is not contained in the certificate.

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