How to buy ssl certificate programmatically? - ssl-certificate

Is there any API available to buy SSL certificates programmatically from some provider? If not, has anyone tried writing a bot to do this from a web interface? Assume it's OK to pre-charge balance on some account.

LetsEncrypt is generating a lot of buzz. Automated and free.
Still in limited beta for now but worth keeping an eye on.

There's a few around. The one I remember off my head is NameCheap/SSLs.com https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/intro.aspx

Related

How to validate SSL ciphers list?

I found many useful online tools that provide SSL/TLS analysis. Is there any offline or online tool that would check if specific ciphers are safe?
Sometimes servers are not visible in internet or admin wish not to inform the rest of the world that his server is not safe enough.
I know that I can run nmap against my own server, however quick static analysis would be fine.
For example, Qualys sells this product that you need for internal scanning. If you're not going to buy anything, you can script around openssl (it wouldn't take long).

VB Application Security - Digital Signatures/CheckSums

I'm creating an application for a select group of people to use. But since it'll be free-ware I can't afford to buy a digital signature to authenticate the source as me. Do I have any other option? Are there any tools in windows I could take advantage of? Any free (third party) tools that I could use to increase the chances my app wont be flagged as potentially malicious? I understand that obviously these things aren't the easiest to come by, but I'd like something to at least say the applications not been tampered with.
Can you please advise me on any tools or methods I could use.
No, in the end these things are about trust, and unless you can get a key trusted at the location where they want to verify the binary, you cannot confer trust of the library.
Key trust is normally established using a certificate that was created for you. Buying a signature would only make sense if there is a separate party signing the code as a service.
Of course there are other ways to trust an application; e.g. you can distribute the source and allow builds of the application at a location that the user can trust. But that won't be as convenient as receiving a signed binary, if the system has been setup to mark those as trusted.

iText: what type of certificates do people use to automate PDF signing on Linux?

I have a low volume (<500 PDFs/year) application for automated digital-signing of PDF files using iText in Java on Linux.
I've got iText adding a digital signature to PDFs using my SSL certificate. Is this a valid method to prove the PDF was generated by my domain (e.g. server)? Can it be used somehow to get the green checkmarks showing "trust" in Adobe Reader?
If not, I should use a certificate intended for PDFs (e.g. not my SSL certificate), so that the little green checkmarks indicating "trust" appear naturally when the user opens the PDF document.
The book http://itextpdf.com/book/digitalsignatures does a great job introducing this topic to me (I have very little experience in this area).
The book talks about a SafeNet Luna device (an HSM), but's it is much too expensive. I only require a minimal solution, and the Luna has a lot of bells and whistles. The Luna PCIe device is less expensive, but I don't require any features other than providing a certificate I can use to sign. Also, the USB-based SafeNet iKey device seems only to be marketed to Windows devices. Has anyone got iKey working with Linux? Is it even possible? Do other companies offer USB based devices that work on Linux?
I'm looking for a minimal solution for serving automated digitally signed PDFs on a Linux box. I'm sure a lot of small businesses have similar needs. I'm just trying to tap into existing knowledge out there. How do people solve this problem?
The solutions I see for automating this process assume large corporations using Adobe Live Cycle, and priced accordingly (see for example: https://www.globalsign.com/pdf-signing/compare-pdf-signing.html). But small businesses need to automate things too.
Ideally someone would sell a certificate similar to the SSL certificates, but for PDF files. Is there such a thing?
Is hardware (of some sort) a requirement (seems so)? If hardware is a requirement, are there any minimal solutions out there (e.g. with limited functionality other than enabling digital signing)?
Hoping someone can help me see the forest from the trees. What's the conventional wisdom?
Regarding signing with your SSL certificate: in a future iText version, we make require that the key-usage of the certificate indicates that the certificate can be used for non-repudiation. For now, we make checking the key-usage the responsibility for the developer, but in a perfect world, you should only sign with certificates suited for non-repudiation, and your SSL certificate probably doesn't allow this.
Regarding the green check mark: unless you can ask the consumers of your PDFs to add the root certificate of your certificate to the list of trusted identities, you'll always need a public/private key stored on hardware to get a green check mark.
Regarding the price of an HSM / USB key. USB keys are much cheaper, but usually they are meant for manual use (usually they have a limit of signing only once every second). I think that GlobalSign has a flavor of keys that work on Linux. As for HSMs, one of our customers told us that he bought one from Utimaco because it was less expensive (but I don't know what budget he had or spent).
No price info, but maybe a good read for inspiration: http://www.opendnssec.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/A-Review-of-Hardware-Security-Modules-Fall-2010.pdf

How to Deploy a Rails 3 Website

I am ready to deploy my rails 3 site to a server. Who would be the best provider to go with? I need it to be easy to deploy and low cost. Does anyone have any experiences they can share?
http://railsplayground.com is cheapest, they are charging $5/month
heroku.com is free for subdomain hosting ie., http://example.heroku.com
the above two are only for testing purpose if your are going live deployment then
either choose AmazonEc2 or rackspace.com/cloud/
regards,
senthilK
http://railsplayground.com/
I did it with my first 2 applictions, they have low cost service and online 24 hours support, they send by mail all the credentials to acces your vps or whatever service you have. But if you are new at deploying they can offer to place the app for you, you just send the app by ticket to them and they'll do it.
I have a VPS at railsplayground now, and I pay about 35usd/month, but I have 2 apps on this server and I can have more.. as much as the server can take it, when it reaches the limit, you can upgrade it.
http://www.heroku.com/ is much easier to use, but if you have an app that do uploads on server, heroku will not do it. they store only application.
I am pleased with railsplayground for now.

Free development certificates for Symbian?

I would like to do Symbian programming with features that require an application to be signed with more then the standard self signed cert. I don't want to pay mony for a cert since I don't know if I will get to a point of selling an application. Is there a way to grant capabilities such as read and write device data to my application for use on just my phone?
If you don't have a Publisher ID the only option for you by now is Open Signed Online.
Open Signed Online allows you to sign an application for installation onto a single device. Unfortunately you will get the signed application, not a certificate itself.
Aside from Open Signed Online, which is pretty hopeless when you want to debug on the device, the only options at the moment are to find someone with a publisher ID to create a developer certificate for you device via Open Signed Offline, or wait for Symbian to come up with another way to get you a developer certificate. They are already planning to make publisher IDs cheaper and easier for individuals to get (currently you need to be a registered company) and wider availability for developer certificates is also on the cards.