How to Convert a Private key to RSA Private key?

Recently, I would need to import SSL cert to my Nutanix cluster platform from our internal CA to address some audit findings. One thing we realised that Nutanix unable to accept normal .pem file private key and require RSA private key instead.

And today I will be sharing the most straightforward or the only way to convert your private key to a RSA private key.

What is the different between private key & RSA private Key?

A private key is a secret, alphanumeric string of characters used to authenticate a user and provide secure access to a system. The private key is different from the public key in that it allows secure access to systems and data without requiring the user to provide any additional authentication.

An RSA Private Key is a specific type of private key that uses the RSA algorithm for encryption and decryption. RSA stands for Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, which are the names of the developers who created the algorithm.

RSA Private Keys are used for secure data transfer and are commonly used for secure online communications, such as digital signatures, secure file transfers, and secure website authentication.

Typrically, the RSA Private Key is typically much longer than a standard private key, and it is also more difficult to generate.

How Can You Convert Private key to RSA Private Key?

In order to convert, you will need a linux machine like red hat linux.

Initally, I did a test as well on Windows machine using same command with openssl installed but the output was not RSA private key. I also even tried to use other methods like keygen to see whether able to do a conversion using existing private key.

You run the this command below, private.pem will be your existing private key filename and private.key will be the RSA private key filename:

openssl rsa -in private.pem -out private.key

After execute this command, it will generate out this RSA private key file called private.key in your linux machine.

Read this too: How to Generate SSH keys in Windows Machine?

Wrapping Up

If you struggling with converting your private key to RSA private key, I hope this will help you.