My apologies if this is a duplicate, I may just not be using the correct terminology in my queries to find what I am looking for.
I have a vendor that sent me a certificate to install in my browser so that we can access their website. We cannot get to their pages otherwise.
We similarly have a server for our distributors that has a self signed certificate currently, but we would like to implement the same private certificate system.
What is this process even called? Where do I get started?
Is it just more options when creating the self signed certificate?
It sounds like you want to use client-side SSL certificates for authentication. The Apache documentation covers this use case in some detail (that's for version 2.4; see here for version 2.2).
Related
I am running a small sinatra application which re-uses a company-wide client certificate every employee has already installed (signed by an internal SSO_CA).
My Sinatra/Thin combination is using the server certificate signed by an internal company CA but is expecting the client certificate signed by SSO_CA.
Technically this worked fine until we got a second self-signed client certificate on our PCs. The browser is unsure which certificate to use and is guessing the wrong one, most users do not read and use the new certificate, which ends in a 403 error.
In addition, browsers remember the decision and you have to explain to many people how to reset the SSL state.
=> Sinatra / Thin/ Eventmachine are not providing an option like :SSLCACertificateFiles '/usr/sinatra/certs/SSO_CA.crt'
to tell the browser "please show up with client certificate from SSO_CA"
Webrick has it but this is not the right choice for "production". Moving to Nginx feels strange as I cannot be the first having this issue in Thin.
I remember there was somewhere in a forum (cannot find it again) someone telling me that the feature is missing but I found this before I had an understanding that this is going to be my problem as well.
Has anybody an idea how to force Thin/Eventmachine to forward a specific CA suggestion for client certificate? It is not :SSLCACertificateFiles, I tried it already.
I am trying to wrap my head around certificates and any help is appreciated. So far this is what I understand, please correct me if I am wrong.
When using the browser when I navigate to the https site the browser downloads the certificate(without the private key) and then continues to send the data over https?
I have come across some sites (especially when developing) that require you to install the certificate on the local machine before making a service call. What is the purpose here and how does it work?
I have also seen some scenarios where you need to install the certificate on the client machine for authentication purposes for example if you are using an email client, how does this work?
When using the browser when I navigate to the https site the browser downloads the certificate(without the private key) and then continues to send the data over https?
No, the browser and the server stablish a SSL/TLS secure channel with a symmetric encryption key. During the handshake process the server presents the https certificate and digitally signs some data with the private key as a proof of authenticity.
I have come across some sites (especially when developing) that require you to install the certificate on the local machine before making a service call. What is the purpose here and how does it work?
The client must trust the server certificate. Usually it has a list with the Certification Authorities for which certificates are accepted. For other certificates is needed to add them to the trust list. If not, the communication will be rejected
I have also seen some scenarios where you need to install the certificate on the client machine for authentication purposes for example if you are using an email client, how does this work?
Probably the same case as the previous one. Also the public part of the certificate of a user can be used to encrypt a message for him
We receive a SHA-2 certificate from a vendor to use on our site when making requests to them. This is unlike anything i have done before. Typically in IIS we would create the request, receive the certs and install.
In this scenario we were just handed one for requests to them. Anyone know how or what is supposed to be done with them?
Did use MMC and installed the cert that way, but not sure how or if that is to link to website.
It's only for server side certificates that you use the IIS management console. It sounds like this is a client certificate used to identify your app to someone else.
It is up to the language you are using to call the webservice to determine where the certificate should be placed. If you are using C# then there are lots of questions that talk about using client certificates. I would imagine that most languages would let you reference the certificate file directly.
I run an nginx-powered application and I recently turned my attention to using it over https. This is the module in nginx that does this: http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpSslModule
However, I'm somewhat unclear about what is actually required to run a site over https.
What else is there to do to serve my site over ssl? What is the role of the certificate, and is it a requirement that I purchase it from somewhere?
You need a certificate to prove to your user that the server they're connected to is indeed the one intended (and not a MITM attacker).
If your server is to be used by a limited number of users to whom you could give a certificate explicitly, you could use a self-signed certificate or create your own certification authority (CA).
Otherwise, if you want your certificate to be recognised by most browsers, you'll need to get one from a commercial CA.
You should find more details in this answer. You may also be interested in this.
I need to implement a SSL certificate for a website, I've got three questions after some research.
1) I believe i need to buy a SSL certificate and ask my host to install it. My question is do you need to alter any code for the website for the certificate?
2) Before I buy the certificate, the website is going to be built for a couple of month at least. I'm just wondering is there a developing SSL certificate I can use for the developing environment?
3) Or do I have to use self assigned certificate? If so are there any good tutorials on how to create a SSL self assigned certificate on a local machine (wamp) and a developing url site?
Thank you very much.
Sam :)
1) No, you do not need to alter any code on your website at all in order to use an installed SSL certificate. It is as simple as prefixing your desired destination link with the HTTPS: protocol specification instead of the typical HTTP: protocol. However, if you want to determine if your site visitor is using an encrypted page before they do something, such as submit a web form with potentially sensitive data, then depending on what you are developing your site in, you will need to detect if the current page request has been sent over HTTP or HTTPS, then if it is an HTTP requested page, you probably want to redirect the page request to the HTTPS version before proceeding.
2) Other than creating your own "self signed" certificate (more on this in #3), no your only option for a publicly valid SSL certificate is to obtain one from a publicly recognized Certificate Authority (CA). Long story short, a certificate of the same key length using the same encryption standard supported by your server and visitor's web browser, is no stronger or weaker regardless of vendor for purposes of encryption. So you can simply shop by price for your SSL certs. I have no affiliation with GoDaddy, but have been using them for years for public SSL certificates.
3) You certainly can create your own self signed certificate. The methods for doing this vary based on your host server and version. The limitation to a self signed certificate, is that if you go to share this with anyone, you get that warning message from your browser that the certificate is not published from a verifiable source. In most current browsers, it looks like a big scary message that something is wrong and they attempt to warn your user away from doing this. However, of course, there is certainly nothing wrong with using a self signed certificate. This is obviously true for your own development uses. Even a self signed certificate of the same key length and encryption method is as cryptographically secure as a commercially provided certificate. If you want to use a self signed certificate, just search for instruction for doing that for your server OS and version for details. Once it is installed, you will get the warning from your browser when you try to browse to a page over HTTPS. Your browser should show you an option to permanently remember and accept your self signed certificate, after which you will no longer see that warning while that certificate remains installed and valid.