I have a question, I fear the answer.
I have:
a top level domain name (free from Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand, .tk, where else?),
a free 2 year ssl certificate from startSSL.com,
a free hosting package.
Now I jumped through every hoop startSSL wanted (admittedly wasn't too difficult), to get me my 2 year ssl certificate, and now I fear I have encountered a final barrier to success that might still stall my plans. I dreamt of a corner certificate stating "Secured by startSSL". I got the code snippet and everythings, and have pasted it into my website.
Problem. my host is not so keen on a free package to allow me to ssl.
As far as I know you need access to some config files to allow this to happen?
or can you just like with .htaccess and .htpassword files do the setting on your webhost?
Also you need a static IP. Are there any workarounds?
Or am I dreaming? Anyone with advice?
SSL Requires some files and configuration changes, pointing to the files.
Also, the static IP is required because with an encrypted request, there's no way to know to what host the request is intended without decryption. The use of a static IP address gives that request a destination.
To clarify: when using virtual hosts, multiple hosts will share the same IP address, so when a request comes in, the first two lines are:
GET /path/to/resource HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Apache (or any web server), looks at the 'Host' field to determine how to route the request. If the request is encrypted, there's no way to determine how to route the request, and you need to know what certificate to use in order to decrypt it.
Forget it. If your host doesn't have SSL configured, you have no chance to add it without their help
There are two problems with your proposed set-up.
Free hosts generally don't provide a control panel interface to allow installation of SSL Certificates (at least I've never seen it) as this requires either their help on the back-end or VPS / Dedicated Server access from the front-end.
Static IP address is a must for SSL certificate installation.
From webserver perspective, SSL cert is about a port and an IP address, even when being used with Name-based virtual hosts.
SSL is about the IP the matching the cert and domain in the URL/request(to verify the cert).
You would have to give a second SSL cert different port or different IP address on the webserver.
Alternatively, you can also get multi-domain and wildcard certs that allow different hostnames or domains to match the cert with different client request URLs, but the cert is still the only thing on that port/IP of the webserver.
Just my $.02
Related
My situation:
I want to run a webserver on a device in an unknown network. Requests on port 80 or 443 will be forwarded to this device from the global ip.
The device regularly posts its IP address to a server on the web and it is saved on this server.
Is it possible to access this device via https without much trouble?
The problem of course is, that the ip can change and a SSL certificate needs to have a hostname.
Edit: The device doesn't have a domain assigned to it that I could use for a certificate. Is it maybe possible to use a domain I own and reroute that to the dynamic ip without changing the header?
As far as I understand it that would make using https possible
The common wisdom of SSL certificates being associated with one IP address is misleading. An SSL certificate is issued for the domain name, not the IP address. The issue with IP addresses stems from the details of the HTTPS protocol, and namely just the issue of name resolution. An HTTP server can host many different sites for many different domains, all on the same port and IP address. It knows which site is being requested based on an HTTP header.
Now, with HTTPS, the server first needs to negotiate a secure SSL connection before any HTTP headers are exchanged. The issue therefore is that it can't know which certificate for which domain it's supposed to use to negotiate a secure connection, because it hasn't yet had a chance to talk to the client about the domain it'd like to visit.
There are actually mechanisms for name negotiation before encryption in later versions of the HTTPS protocol, but the practical problem is that older clients do not support it yet (stare at IE6).
So the practical solution is to reserve one IP address and/or port for each HTTPS site, because then there's no issue of multiple name resolutions. One IP/port is reserved for one specific HTTPS site and in extension for one SSL certificate.
Which means, as long as your server is only serving one HTTPS domain, its IP address can change as often as it wants; there's no issue there.
There is no problem with dynamic IP. In SSL certificate you store a static hostname (domain.com), no IP address.
I've got a home server that sits behind a dynamic ip address. I use a free dynamic dns service (http://freedns.afraid.org/) so that I can access my server via the following (fake) hostname foo.example.com
I use bluehost to host a separate domain, mycompany.com, and used their DNS settings to set up a CNAME to route traffic for mycompany.com to foo.example.com
What i want to do now is throw an SSL cert into the mix. The problem is I don't know how to go about getting the cert. Some companys (godaddy) want me to associate a domain to the cert. I don't know if that's mycompany.com or foo.example.com. Even if i pick one, it seems like the browser would complain about a mismatch.
Any insight would be great.
If the website gets accessed as https://foo.example.com you need a certificate for foo.example.com. If it gets accessed as https://mycompany.com you need a certfificate for mycompany.com. If it needs to be accessed with both names (like if one side would redirect to the other) you need a certificate containing both names.
I am trying to host 2 sites on a single IP address and they need to be accessed via SSL however the majority of my users use Internet Explorer on Windows XP meaning using multiple SSLs with SNI may prevent them getting access.
I was wondering if I could use a multiple virtual hosts but still use a single SSL certificate and avoid SNI ?
Alternatively how feasible is it for me to install two Apache webserver instances, each its own DocumentRoot and own SSL certificate and for me to simply use the first Apache webserver as an entry point to entertain some requests and to redirect others to the other SSLed Apache instance ?
Could I potentially use the Windows Host file (Windows 2008 Server) to redirect incoming requests to the intended Apache Server instead of using VirtualHosts ?
Apologies if I have confused concepts.
You can try to purchase an X.509 certificate with two domains in it. I don't know what particular CAs do this, but I also don't see why they would refuse. You need to ask their support, though.
Your idea to redirect some requests to another server residing on a different port sounds good as well, though you will have to use two different certificates for different domain names, of course.
Finally if your second domain can be something like additional.mydomain.com , you have greater chance to buy a certificate issued for mydomain.com + www.mydomain.com + additional.mydomain.com (this can be a wildcard certificate or a certificate with additional subdomain names).
I have a domain which we'll call www.mydomain.com for reference. I have a subdomain at m.mydomain.com for people who want to view the website via their mobile devices. My users are logging into this site so I wanted to protect their credentials if possible. Because of this, I purchased an SSL certificate.
I'm not an SSL certificate guru, so I may be misunderstanding something. I thought that I could have a single SSL certificate for my domain. However, when I attempt to access https://m.mydomain.com I get redirected to https://www.mydomain.com instead of seeing the content that is at http://m.mydomain.com. In other words, here is a list of my configurations and results pulled from IIS 7:
Site Name Binding Type Host Name Port IP Address Result via Browser
--------- ------------ --------- ---- ---------- -----------------------------------
MySite http 80 ww.xx.yyy.zz http://www.mydomain.com works fine
MySite https 443 ww.xx.yyy.zz https://www.mydomain.com works fine
MyMobileSite http m.mydomain.com 80 ww.xx.yyy.zz http://m.mydomain.com works
My first hunch was to add a new binding of type https to MyMobileSite on port 443. However, in the process, I noticed that I'm prompted to select an SSL certificate. I'm concerned that if I select the SSL certificate associated with MySite, it will break that binding. Once again, I do not fully understand SSL certificates. Can I use the same SSL certificate across multiple IIS Sites and multiple binding as long as they share the same domain? Can I go ahead and create the binding like I was thinking? My main concern is that I break something and being unable to reverse it.
Thank you!
no the fact is that certificates are used to verify that your not using someone else's ip (spoofing) i suggest using linux and self signed ssl certificates but if your using windows thats fine too just use ssl on all your domains as long as there on same (external) IP,
hope this helps.
PS SSL is just a way of making sure security encrypted protocols are in effect between server and client.
I always recommend having both :443 and :80 for everyone to choose how they connect except if you are running sensitive data streams for money transfers etc, then defiantly make sure it uses secure (443 port) and never port 80 (unsecured connection).
It all depends on the type of certificate you purchased. Usually your lower costs cretificates are tied directly to one domain/sub domain name. However there are certificates that you can buy for instance the
http://www.verisign.com/ssl/buy-ssl-certificates/subject-alternative-name-certificates/index.html
Depending upon your organizations policy on purchasing, i would almost just suggest buying a seperate one for the Mobile site
AFAIK, SSL is assigned to a single domain name (maybe several subdomains via wildcard).
On the other hand i heard that the webserver does not see the domain before it serves the ssl?
If I have multiple domains running as vhosts on one IP address:
Q1: Can the webserver serve the appropriate respective SSL to the sites?
Q2: Is there a way to have only one multi-domain SSL serving two domains on one IP?
Illuminate me out of confusion brought upon me by this seemingly self-contradictory quote:
Regular SSL Certificates are issued for a single FQDN (Fully Qualified
Domain Name). The domain using the certificate has to have its own
unique external IP address from which to be served. In practice, this
means that if you have multiple domains on a single IP address/server,
then you had to install a separate certificate on each domain you
wanted to secure.
The reason for this is the use of 'Host-Headers'. They allow a
web server to use a single IP address to serve many separate sites
with different FQDNs. They do this by identifying the incoming request
for a webpage, and routing it to the correct site accordingly.
When an SSL connection is initiated, the server must send a
certificate to the client - before it knows the host-header of the
request. The only identifying piece of data it has is the requested IP
address. As such, two or more sites on one IP address cannot use
different SSL certificates....
Q1> the web server doesn't need to know the domains embedded in an SSL cert. only the browser does since it's the one making sure the domain in the certificate matches the domain in the address bar. The web server just serves up the cert bound to the ip address, regardless of what domain is in the certificate.
Q2> what you describe is a SAN or UC certificate. They are designed to do what you stated, namely allow multiple domains to share one cert on one ip address. Check out this link on Subject alternative names for more info