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.
Related
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
I have a portofolio website runing on a IIS Windows server if that matters.But some people complained that they get "website unsafe" when navigating the website.I personaly didnt get that error , and I tried the website on other diveces and they didnt get it either.
Could have something to do with SSL Certificate ? I didn't bought one ,but I have a self signed certificate according to ssl checker
.Do I need to buy a trusted SSL Certificate ? Or is there another problem ?
On my website i have a "Contact us" page with a web form that users should fill with name,email...
EDIT: I don't know if it's ok to post the website link here, if it's needed let me know .
EDIT: Link to website here.
This is a general problem with self-signed certificates, as the visitors of you website, or their browser, are not able to verify the identity of your server. The reason for this is, that there is no Certification Authority that signed it, thus the browser does not have a (root) certificate that is in the chain of trust linked to your certificate.
This problem with self-signed certificates is well explained in this post
The risks are for the client. The point of the SSL server certificate is that it is used by the client to know the server public key, with some level of guarantee that the key indeed belongs to the intended server. The guarantee comes from the CA: the CA is supposed to perform extensive verification of the requester identity before issuing the certificate.
When a client (the user and his Web browser) "accepts" a certificate which has not been issued by one of the CA that the client trusts (the CA which were embedded in Windows by Microsoft), then the risk is that the client is currently talking to a fake server, i.e. is under attack. Note that passive attacks (the attacker observes the data but does not alter it in any way) are thwarted by SSL regardless of whether the CA certificate was issued by a mainstream CA or not.
On a general basis, you do not want to train your users to ignore the scary security warning from the browser, because this makes them vulnerable to such server impersonation attacks (which are not that hard to mount, e.g. with DNS poisoning). On the other hand, if you can confirm, through some other way, that the certificate is genuine that one time, then the browser will remember the certificate and will not show warnings for subsequent visits as long as the same self-signed certificate is used. The newly proposed Convergence PKI is an extension of this principle. Note that this "remembered certificate" holds as long as the certificate is unchanged, so you really want to set the expiry date of your self-signed certificate in the far future (but not beyond 2038 if you want to avoid interoperability issues).
It shall be noted that since a self-signed certificate is not "managed" by a CA, there is no possible revocation. If an attacker steals your private key, you permanently lose, whereas CA-issued certificates still have the theoretical safety net of revocation (a way for the CA to declare that a given certificate is rotten). In practice, current Web browser do not check revocation status anyway.
I am developing browser extension, that sends some data from currently browsed page to my backend server. User is aware of it, it is intended.
I don't want to cause any user-data exposure, when the user is e.g. on unsecured wifi. So I just want to ensure, the data and the url goes over the net encrypted and only my backend will see them.
Do I understand correctly, that any SSL certificate, even free one from StartSSL will do the trick?
What other side effects with free SSL certificate should I consider?
- will the user's http-client trust such a certificate?
Thanks.
The SSL certificate will do the trick as long as it can be validated. That means that the root certificate of the certificate chain needs to be within the trusted certificate store of the browser.
Furthermore, the certificate will have to be for the right address (URL), must not be revoked, CRL's and OCSP must be configured correctly etc. etc. In other words, the usual steps required to have your web-service certificate validated must be met.
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 have activated SSL in live magento store.If i check this url https://www.rave-nation.com/index.php, i m getting this error "This Connection is Untrusted".I can't figure out the solution.Do you need more information to find the solution?
The SSL certificate you've installed is:
Self signed
Signed for https://localhost, not https://www.rave-nation.com
SSL certificates serve two purposes. The first is a means to encrypt the data being transferred between the client and the server. The second is functioning as a method of verifying the identity of the server you are contacting.
Certificates that are self-signed will always generate warnings to people visiting your site because the certificate has not been signed by a high authority. The higher authority, called a CA, vouch for your server being the server your visitor thinks it is.
Anyone could create an SSL certificate for the domain https://mail.google.com, for example, and self sign it. If I was to trick someone's browser to take them to my server instead of Google's when they enter https://mail.google.com in their address bar they'd get an error message saying that the connection is untrusted. This appears because the person that signed the certificate, me this case, was not trusted in the first and didn't have the authority to vouch for anyone else, as far as the web browser was concerned.
Using a certificate signed for one hostname, in your case localhost, on a website that uses another hostname, rave-nation.com, is warning the visitors that this server is claiming to be someone it is not.