How to create a self-signed SSL Certificate for Apache

Normal Web traffic is sent over the Internet. This means that anyone with access to the right tools, you can snoop all this traffic. Of course, this can lead to problems, in particular where security and privacy, it is necessary, as for example in the data bank and credit card transactions. Secure Socket Layer is used to encrypt the data stream between a Web server and Web client.

SSL makes use of what is known as asymmetric cryptography, also known as public key cryptography (PKI). With public key cryptography are created two keys, one public, and one private. Anything encrypted with either key can be decrypted only by its key. Therefore, if the current message or data to be encrypted using the private key of the server, it can be decrypted only by using the corresponding public key, ensures that the data would only come from the server.

SSL Certificates uses public key cryptography to encrypt the data stream to travel over the Internet, why a certificate is necessary? The technical answer to this question is that the certificate is not really necessary-data is secure and cannot be easily decrypted by a third party. The certificate is used, however, a decisive role in the process of communication.

A certificate signed by a trusted certification authority (CA), provides its holder is who it claims to be you. Without a trusted certificate to the signed data can be encrypted, the party you are communicating with, however, may not be whom you believe. Without certificates, it would be much more common impersonation attacks.

Step 1: Generate a Private Key

Toolbox is used to generate a RSA private key & service customers (signing a SSL Certificates request). You can also use to generate a self-signed certificate that can be used for testing purposes or internal use.

The first step is to create your private RSA key. This key is a 1024-bit RSA key is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in PEM format, so it's readable as ASCII.

Command:-

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

Generating RSA private key, 1024 bit long modulus .........................................................++++++ ........++++++ e is 65537 (0x10001) Enter PEM pass phrase: Verifying password - Enter PEM pass phrase:
Step 2: Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

Once you generate the private key can generate a certificate signing request. CSR and then, use one of two methods. Ideally, CSR will be sent to a certification authority such as verisign) to verify the identity of the requestor, and issued a signing certificate or Thawte. The second option is to self-sign, Certificate Signing Request, in the next section.

Period of CSR generation you will be prompted to enter a few pieces of information. These are the properties of an x.509 certificate. Tip of the "common name (for example, your name)". It is important to be an SSL server's fully qualified domain name of this field is filled in. If you want to protect this Web site will https://public.akadia.com and enter public.akadia.com in this prompt. Generate CSR command, as follows:

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

Output:

Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:CH State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:Bern Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:Oberdiessbach Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Akadia AG Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Information Technology Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:public.akadia.com Email Address []:martin dot zahn at akadia dot ch Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []:

One of misery-side effect of the private key is Apache ask oiith pass phrase password every time the Web server is running. Clearly this is not necessarily as someone not always be around to type a password in a phrase, such as after the restart, or crash. Mod_ssl provides the ability to use external program instead of in the beyond-a built-in phrase, however, this is not necessarily the safest option or. It is possible to remove the Triple-DES encryption key, and thus no longer need to type a passphrase.

If the private key is encrypted, it is very important that this file must be readable only by root user! If your system is ever disclosed to a third party obtains your private key without encryption, the certificate corresponding to the need to be revoked. With this he said, use the following command to remove the pass-phrase from the key:

cp server.key server.key.org openssl rsa -in server.key.org -out server.key

The newly created server.key file has no more passphrase in it.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 745 Jun 29 12:19 server.csr -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 891 Jun 29 13:22 server.key -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 963 Jun 29 13:22 server.key.org

In this step, you create a self-signed certificate because you or you don't plan on the need your certificate signed by a certification authority, or want to test the new SSL application while the CA is the signature of the certificate. This temporary certificate will generate an error in the client browser to the effect that the CA signature is you know and trust.

To generate a temporary certificate which is good for 365 days, issue the following command:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

Signature ok subject=/C=CH/ST=Bern/L=Oberdiessbach/O=Akadia AG/OU=Information Technology/CN=public.akadia.com/Email=martin dot zahn at akadia dot ch Getting Private key

Installed Apache with mod_ssl, it creates several libraries in the Apache config. Location of this directory will differ depending on how Apache compiled.

cp server.crt /usr/local/apache/conf/ssl.crt cp server.key /usr/local/apache/conf/ssl.key

Step 6: Configuring SSL Enabled Virtual Hosts

"%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"

Step 7: Restart Apache and Test

Author’s Bio:- TheSSLstore.com is one of the largest SSL Certificates providers globally. Join the Reseller SSL Certificate program and SSL Certificate Affiliate to join with us. Among the Internet security solutions TheSSLstore.com offers are SSL certificates from Thawte, GeoTrust, and RapidSSL. To learn more about SSL Certificates visit https://www.thesslstore.com

Related Articles - SSL Certificate, SSL Certificates, Reseller SSL Certificate Affiliate, VeriSign SSL Certificates, RapidSSL Certificate, Thawte SSL, GeoTrust SSL Certi,

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