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How to get a self signed certificate?
SSL makes use of what is known as asymmetric cryptography, commonly referred to as public key cryptography (PKI). With public key cryptography, two keys are created, one public, one private. Anything encrypted with either key can only be decrypted with its corresponding key. Thus if a message or data stream were encrypted with the server’s private key, it can be decrypted only using its corresponding public key, ensuring that the data only could have come from the server.
If SSL utilizes public key cryptography to encrypt the data stream traveling over the Internet, why is a certificate necessary? The technical answer to that question is that a certificate is not really necessary – the data is secure and cannot easily be decrypted by a third party. However, certificates do serve a crucial role in the communication process. The certificate, signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA), ensures that the certificate holder is really who he claims to be. Without a trusted signed certificate, your data may be encrypted; however, the party you are communicating with may not be whom you think. Without certificates, impersonation attacks would be much more common.
Step 1: Generate a Private Key
The openssl toolkit is used to generate an RSA Private Key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request). It can also be used to generate self-signed certificates which can be used for testing purposes or internal usage.
The first step is to create your RSA Private Key. This key is a 1024 bit RSA key which is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in a PEM format so that it is readable as ASCII text.
Step 2: Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
Once the private key is generated a Certificate Signing Request can be generated. The CSR is then used in one of two ways. Ideally, the CSR will be sent to a Certificate Authority, such as Thawte or Verisign who will verify the identity of the requestor and issue a signed certificate. The second option is to self-sign the CSR, which will be demonstrated in the next section.
During the generation of the CSR, you will be prompted for several pieces of information. These are the X.509 attributes of the certificate. One of the prompts will be for “Common Name (e.g., YOUR name)”. It is important that this field be filled in with the fully qualified domain name of the server to be protected by SSL. If the website to be protected will be https://public.akadia.com, then enter public.akadia.com at this prompt.
Step 3: Remove Passphrase from Key
One unfortunate side-effect of the pass-phrased private key is that Apache will ask for the pass-phrase each time the web server is started. Obviously this is not necessarily convenient as someone will not always be around to type in the pass-phrase, such as after a reboot or crash. mod_ssl includes the ability to use an external program in place of the built-in pass-phrase dialog, however, this is not necessarily the most secure option either. It is possible to remove the Triple-DES encryption from the key, thereby no longer needing to type in a pass-phrase. If the private key is no longer encrypted, it is critical that this file only be readable by the root user! If your system is ever compromised and a third party obtains your unencrypted private key, the corresponding certificate will need to be revoked.
Step 4: Generating a Self-Signed Certificate
At this point you will need to generate a self-signed certificate because you either don’t plan on having your certificate signed by a CA, or you wish to test your new SSL implementation while the CA is signing your certificate. This temporary certificate will generate an error in the client browser to the effect that the signing certificate authority is unknown and not trusted.
Step 5: Installing the Private Key and Certificate
When Apache with mod_ssl is installed, it creates several directories in the Apache config directory. The location of this directory will differ depending on how Apache was compiled.
Step 6: Configuring SSL Enabled Virtual Hosts
Step 7: Restart Apache and Test
How to get a self signed certificate?
SSL makes use of what is known as asymmetric cryptography, commonly referred to as public key cryptography (PKI). With public key cryptography, two keys are created, one public, one private. Anything encrypted with either key can only be decrypted with its corresponding key. Thus if a message or data stream were encrypted with the server’s private key, it can be decrypted only using its corresponding public key, ensuring that the data only could have come from the server.
If SSL utilizes public key cryptography to encrypt the data stream traveling over the Internet, why is a certificate necessary? The technical answer to that question is that a certificate is not really necessary – the data is secure and cannot easily be decrypted by a third party. However, certificates do serve a crucial role in the communication process. The certificate, signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA), ensures that the certificate holder is really who he claims to be. Without a trusted signed certificate, your data may be encrypted; however, the party you are communicating with may not be whom you think. Without certificates, impersonation attacks would be much more common.
Step 1: Generate a Private Key
The openssl toolkit is used to generate an RSA Private Key and CSR (Certificate Signing Request). It can also be used to generate self-signed certificates which can be used for testing purposes or internal usage.
The first step is to create your RSA Private Key. This key is a 1024 bit RSA key which is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in a PEM format so that it is readable as ASCII text.
Step 2: Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
Once the private key is generated a Certificate Signing Request can be generated. The CSR is then used in one of two ways. Ideally, the CSR will be sent to a Certificate Authority, such as Thawte or Verisign who will verify the identity of the requestor and issue a signed certificate. The second option is to self-sign the CSR, which will be demonstrated in the next section.
During the generation of the CSR, you will be prompted for several pieces of information. These are the X.509 attributes of the certificate. One of the prompts will be for “Common Name (e.g., YOUR name)”. It is important that this field be filled in with the fully qualified domain name of the server to be protected by SSL. If the website to be protected will be https://public.akadia.com, then enter public.akadia.com at this prompt.
Step 3: Remove Passphrase from Key
One unfortunate side-effect of the pass-phrased private key is that Apache will ask for the pass-phrase each time the web server is started. Obviously this is not necessarily convenient as someone will not always be around to type in the pass-phrase, such as after a reboot or crash. mod_ssl includes the ability to use an external program in place of the built-in pass-phrase dialog, however, this is not necessarily the most secure option either. It is possible to remove the Triple-DES encryption from the key, thereby no longer needing to type in a pass-phrase. If the private key is no longer encrypted, it is critical that this file only be readable by the root user! If your system is ever compromised and a third party obtains your unencrypted private key, the corresponding certificate will need to be revoked.
Step 4: Generating a Self-Signed Certificate
At this point you will need to generate a self-signed certificate because you either don’t plan on having your certificate signed by a CA, or you wish to test your new SSL implementation while the CA is signing your certificate. This temporary certificate will generate an error in the client browser to the effect that the signing certificate authority is unknown and not trusted.
Step 5: Installing the Private Key and Certificate
When Apache with mod_ssl is installed, it creates several directories in the Apache config directory. The location of this directory will differ depending on how Apache was compiled.
Step 6: Configuring SSL Enabled Virtual Hosts
Step 7: Restart Apache and Test
Getting Targeted Traffic Is Easier When You Use Social Bookmarking
Getting traffic to your blog is a trouble just about every blogger has to deal with. You will find an awful lot of programs on the Internet for getting traffic but most of those programs are just garbage. You’ll find great ways to get more visitors to your blog and in the following paragraphs we are going to be taking a look at social bookmarking as a way to get this traffic you need.
The main benefits of making use of social bookmarking is that many men and women belong to these social bookmarking sites and you will be able to get traffic right from these websites. Another thing you need to realize is that each time you publish one of your blog posts on these kinds of social bookmarking sites you end up building backlinks. As many of you know the more backlinks you have the more site visitors you’ll get from the search engines. The best part is when you keep creating these links the search engines will often rank your site higher in their results.
While you can join as many social bookmarking websites as you want the real key is to focus on the high PR websites first. Some of the higher page rank websites are usually sites like Google Bookmarks, Hi5 and Reddit. But do not simply stop there because you can find hundreds more Internet sites that you will be able to leave your link on. I recommend joining to about 40 or 50 of the top social bookmarking sites. The search engines are a great place to start when your looking to put together a list of sites. I ought to tell you that when you begin to set these up make sure you have a few hours to go through them all.
Now all you have to do is take the new posts you create and add them to all the social bookmarking sites, this is the post url not your homepage. This will take you a while in the beginning but once you have a method and a rhythm you’ll discover that this can be done in an hour or so. The best part about this method is that you will observe an instant surge in your visitors right off the bat.
You actually don’t have to sign up for all these websites yourself as you can hire individuals to sign you up to about 40 social websites and they normally will only charge you $5. Don’t forget about making your posts every single day. You can actually find a couple of programs on the web that will automatically post your blog posts in the social bookmarking sites for you. Ping. fm and only wire will be the 2 programs that can care for your posts. Your blog posts will be automatically submitted to these sites when you use one of those systems.
In short, social bookmarking can really supply your site traffic the boost that it needs to take your earnings to a higher level. Of course you will need to keep in mind that you will not only be generating traffic from the social websites but by building 50 backlinks each day you will be getting plenty of attention from the search engines.