certtool never asks for CA-password when signing certificates

[Tom Ackermann]

Hi all

I have already posted this in several (ubuntu-) forums but haven't received any hints so far, maybe somebody on this list can shed some light on this:

When creating a CA with a password, certtool never again asks for the password when signing new certificates.

Steps to reproduce (on Ubuntu 12.04, amd64)
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address@hidden certtool -v
certtool (GnuTLS) 2.12.14
(...)
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1. Create a private key for the CA:
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$ address@hidden certtool --generate-privkey --outfile ca_tls.key --password "secret"
(...)
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2. Create a self-signed certificate for the CA
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address@hidden certtool --generate-self-signed --load-privkey ca_tls.key --outfile ca_tls.cert --password "secret"
Generating a self signed certificate...
Please enter the details of the certificate's distinguished name. Just press enter to ignore a field.
(...)
Does the certificate belong to an authority? (y/N): y
Path length constraint (decimal, -1 for no constraint): -1
Is this a TLS web client certificate? (y/N): n
Will the certificate be used for IPsec IKE operations? (y/N):
Is this also a TLS web server certificate? (y/N): n
Enter the e-mail of the subject of the certificate:
Will the certificate be used to sign other certificates? (y/N): y
Will the certificate be used to sign CRLs? (y/N): y
Will the certificate be used to sign code? (y/N): y
Will the certificate be used to sign OCSP requests? (y/N): y
(...)
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3. Create a key for the server
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address@hidden certtool --generate-privkey --outfile server_tls.key
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4. Create a certificate for the server
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address@hidden certtool --generate-certificate --load-privkey server_tls.key --load-ca-certificate ca_tls.cert --load-ca-privkey ca_tls.key --outfile server_tls.cert
Generating a signed certificate...
Please enter the details of the certificate's distinguished name. Just press enter to ignore a field.
(...)
Does the certificate belong to an authority? (y/N):
Is this a TLS web client certificate? (y/N):
Will the certificate be used for IPsec IKE operations? (y/N):
Is this also a TLS web server certificate? (y/N): y
Enter a dnsName of the subject of the certificate: server
Enter a dnsName of the subject of the certificate: server.com
Enter a dnsName of the subject of the certificate: www.server.com
Enter a dnsName of the subject of the certificate:
Enter the IP address of the subject of the certificate:
Will the certificate be used for signing (DHE and RSA-EXPORT ciphersuites)? (y/N):
Will the certificate be used for encryption (RSA ciphersuites)? (y/N): y
(...)
Is the above information ok? (y/N): y

Signing certificate...
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The certificate for the server gets created and works fine (e.g. importing the CA cert in firefox and configuring apache with the server cert). However, I would expect to be asked for the CA password (created in step1) when signing the certificate in step 4. This doesn't happen.

By the way: Why can I even define a password for the CA certificate in step 2? I would think a password for the CA key should be sufficient?

Thanks!