private keys

Browsing here and there I gathered the following steps to create a set of public/private keys to digitally sign messages along with the corresponding X.509 certificate .

If you are using Debian or any other distro that's based on it (such as Ubuntu), you are advised to update, because a weakness was discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL.

To fix the problem, you will have to update the OpenSSL packages and regenerate any private keys made on Debian (Etch or newer) or Ubuntu 7.04 and higher.

Luciano Bello discovered that the random number generator in Debian'sopenssl package is predictable. This is caused by an incorrectDebian-specific change to the openssl package (CVE-2008-0166).

As aresult, cryptographic key material may be guessable.