I am quite confused here:
I use DNSMadeeasy to manage my DNS. I have two apps.
One is Heroku hosted, and has https on https://example.com - Heroku has many great tutorials to setup the certificate, it hasn't been a problem.
The other one is a wordpress, hosted in 1and1 (though it shouldn't matter here), and is reachable at http://subdomain.example.com and we want it to be available at https://subdomain.example.com
1and1 does sell SSL certificate, but their automated setup works only when one uses their services for DNS also, as they say. Their support says it should be DNSMadeEasy which should be hosting our SSL certificate. I have the feeling it is not true, because for https://example.com, DNSMadeEasy was never involved.
Questions:
When does certificate querying occurs? Before, After, or in parallel of DNS resolution?
Who is hosting a certificate? The DNS provider? The server (accessible like a sitemap.xml at the root for instance)? A third party?
To enlarge the case, in general if I have a personal server with a fix IP, how can I communicate through https with a valid certificate?
In my case, how can I get my way out of it to make https://subdomain.example.com work?
You are right for not believing the 1and1 suggestion.
To answer your questions:
When does certificate querying occurs? Before, After, or in parallel
of DNS resolution?
A client resolves domain name to an IP address first. So DNS resolution happens first.
Who is hosting a certificate?
The server (in simplistic terms) hosts the certificate.
When a client wants to connect to your site (via HTTPS) it will first establish a secure connection with that IP address on port 443 (this is why usually (without SNI) you can only have one SSL certificate per IP address). As part of this process (which is called handshake) a client can also specify a server name (so-called server name extension) - this is a domain name of your site. This is useful if you have an SSL certificate that is valid for multiple domains.
A good/detailed explanation how it works can be found here
http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html
if I have a personal server with a fix IP, how can I communicate
through https with a valid certificate?
Your server will need to be able to respond on port 443 and have/host an SSL certificate for a domain that resolves to that IP address.
In my case, how can I get my way out of it to make
https://subdomain.example.com work?
You need to purchase a certificate for subdomain.example.com and install it on the wordpress server.
Usually in hosted solution like yours you have 2 options:
Buy the SSL certificate via the provider (1and1 in your case) - a simpler option, they will configure everything for you.
Buy the SSL certificate yourself. Here you will most likely need to login to your 1and1/Wordpress management interface and generate a CSR (essentially a certificate request). Then you purchase the SSL certificate using this CSR and then you can install it via the same management interface.
The process will look similar to this:
http://wpengine.com/support/add-ssl-site/
Related
I am new to server management and all that HTTP stuff. I am setting up an internal server for my home to serve websites internally, my website needs to register a service worker and for that, I'll need an SSL Certificate and HTTP connection, which seems impossible in my case as all localhost or internal IPs are served over HTTP with untrusted SSL Certificates.
If anyone could suggest a way around serving websites over HTTPS with trusted certificates so that service worker can be used.
Note: I'll be using Xampp Apache for my Linux server with a static internal IP.
If you need 'trusted cert for any client', I may say "no way".
But if you need 'trusted cert for your client only', you have a way to do that.
I guess you published self-ssl cert for your Apache. In the case, you just install the cert into your client.
example: The following link tell us the case of client = Chrome on Windows.
https://peacocksoftware.com/blog/make-chrome-auto-accept-your-self-signed-certificate
If you use any programming language as a client, you may need another way to install the cert.
I am going to use an SSL certificate on my chat application based on XMPP(ejabberd) which is hosted on an IP.
So, I will be using the IP as the common name when I am generating my SSL certificate. But the server that has everything hosted on it, refers to the IP using a hostname as abcd.yourserver.net.
Therefore, I am confused as to if I have to use the IP or this weird hostname while generating my SSL certificate and if in future I decide to use a domain name instead of the IP for my application, will I have to buy a new SSl certificate or can I regenerate the old one. Also, can I change the type like wilcard or single certificate?
P.S. I have never bought an SSL certificate, so forgive me if the question is newbish.
When generating an SSL certificate for an XMPP server, you have to use the domain name of your XMPP service.
I have a IIS 7 server hosting a few different sites. Recently I purchased and installed a SSL certificate to one of the site. Both http and https binding are setup with host header xxx.com and www.xxx.com.
But now i discover that other site with no SSL is loading the certificate and show the untrusted cert error when accessing through https.
Can i know how I can stop other non SSL site from loading the certificate?
Thank you.
I assume that
you are using the server on a single IP address
provide service for multiple names on this single IP address
have configured SSL for some of the names but not for others
This means, that
The server is listening on this specific IP address for SSL connections.
The server can only decide after receiving the initial SSL request from the client (ClientHello) which certificate it should use. The Client hash to use SNI (server name indication) to tell the server which hostname it expects. Most newer clients support this but for example IE8/XP does not.
Since the server has to listen for SSL connections on this IP address it can happen, that it receives a SSL request for a hostname, where it has not certificate configured. In this cases a server could do the following:
Use some other certificate it has configured. This is what your server is doing. This results in an error on the client about an invalid certificate since the name in the certificate does not match the expected name.
Simply close the connection or issue some SSL error. This would result in an SSL handshake error on the client which browsers usually display in a way so that end users are not able to understand what's going on. For the browser the situation is simply a server error and the server is not able to give the browser more detailed information (this is not part of the SSL protocol).
If you don't like any of these two problems you must serve the non-SSL hosts from a different IP address than the SSL hosts, so that the server will not even listen on the SSL port for connections for the non-SSL hosts.
I hope this explanation helps with your problem. If you have now specific questions about the configuration of the server to achieve the outlined solution you should ask them at serverfault.com instead.
I'm implementing mutual SSL between service A and service B. Service A uses both 1-way and 2-way SSL. 1-way for the communication between a user and website A, and 2-way SSL to forward requests from that user to the service B in a secure way.
1-way SSL in service A is specified in Tomcat server.xml. 2-way SSL is implemented using JSEE secure socket communication on the client side (service A), and Tomcat config (service B). Atm. when I try to access service A I get ssl_error_rx_record_too_long error.
According to this answer ssl_error_rx_record_too_long and Apache SSL one of the reasons may be the fact that I'm using more than one SSL certificate for the same IP. Is this really the case that you can't use the same IP for several certificates? Even if one certificate is a server certificate (for 1-way SSL) and another is a client certificate (for 2-way SSL)?
This may not be the cause of my problem, but I just want to make sure if it's actually possible to have several certificates for the same FQDN. Thanks for help!
ssl_error_rx_record_too_long generally has nothing to do with certificate configuration, but the fact that what's talking on that port isn't actually using SSL/TLS.
The answers (and even the update to the question) in the question you linked to also point to this problem (e.g. missing SSLEngine on). You probably forgot something like SSLEnabled="true" in your connector configuration.
As I was saying in an answer to your other question, being able to configure two server certificates on the same IP address isn't really a problem for your case.
it's actually possible to have several certificates for the same FQDN
It is possible to configure multiple certificates on the same IP address and port using the Server Name Indication TLS extension, but both servers and clients would need to support it. In particular, this is not supported by the JSSE in Java 7 on the server side (only on the client side), but there are workarounds if you're willing to put a reverse proxy in front of your Java server.
This wouldn't be possible to do this with the same FQDN, since it's what allows to pick the certificate. This being said, having multiple server certificates for the same FQDN on the same IP address is generally pointless. Supporting multiple certificates is precisely useful when you need to support distinct names.
I have a site that has subdomains for each user and a wildcard SSL Cert
https://user1.mysite.com
https://user2.mysite.com
The question is can someone set a cname record such as user1.theirsite.com -> user1.mysite.com and have it still use https?
Will it work if they install a SSL Cert on their server to secure the connection?
Thanks
The best way for this to work is if they arrange with you to have your SSL certificate include their "alias" as a Subject Alternate Name extension in your X.509 certificate.
This is the approach used by some CDNs when they host https sites for clients - they put all of the known site names that are hosted on one server in one large SSL certificate, and then the clients use CNAMEs to point their domain at the right CDN server.
The host name and certificate verification (and in fact, checking that SSL is used at all) are solely the responsibility of the client.
The host name verification will be done by the client, as specified in RFC 2818, based on the host name they request in their URL. Whether the host name DNS resolution is based on a CNAME entry or anything else is irrelevant.
If users are typing https://user1.theirsite.com/ in their browser, the certificate on the target site should be valid for user1.theirsite.com.
If they have their own server for user1.theirsite.com, different to user1.mysite.com, a DNS CNAME entry wouldn't make sense. Assuming the two hosts are effectively distinct, they could have their own valid certificate for user1.theirsite.com and make a redirection to https://user1.theirsite.com/. The redirection would also be visible in the address bar.
If you really wanted to have a CNAME from user1.theirsite.com to user1.mysite.com, they might be able to give you their certificate and private key so that you host it on your site too, using Server Name Indication (assuming same port, and of course same IP address since you're using a CNAME). This would work for clients that support SNI. There would however be a certain risk to them in giving you their private keys (which isn't generally recommended).
The following is set up and working:
DNS entry for a.corp.com -> CNAME b.corp2.com -> A 1.2.3.4
The haproxy at 1.2.3.4 will serve up the cert for a.corp.com and the site loads fine from a webserver backend.
So, on your server you will need user1.theirsite.com cert and it will work.