On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 05:25:21PM -0600, jack seth wrote: > Well I ran the command > openssl asn1parse -in ca.key > > I got a bunch of numbers, a hex dump, and something that says 'rsaEncryption' In that case, this is a PKCS#8 file encoded in PEM. The first line was probably: -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- > It does have MII at the start but it also has ----Begin Private Key---- at the beginning. Now that I've read this far, good to see everything still makes sense. > Any more steps to follow to find out what type of key this is? It is an RSA key, in PKCS#8 format, encoded as PEM. The "openssl pkey" command outputs PKCS#8. The "openssl rsa" command outputs the legacy RSA format. Use "openssl pkey" not "openssl rsa". But to be blunt this is all a big waste of time. Both formats work just fine, and contain identical data, if you bother to check it with "-text". -- Viktor.