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How to get a self signed certificate?

September 9, 2020 Site Security No comments

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

Doremisoft PDF to EPUB Converter for Mac Make A Difference

September 2, 2020 Technology No comments

iPad is an eReader with its attractive e-reader app called iBooks, which provides wonderful reading experience for all iPad users and a source of envy for others. iBooks uses ePub as its core format-if you already have many eBooks in PDF format on your Mac, just convert eBooks from PDF to EPUB format and sync them to iPad.

Using an efficient mac converter application called Mac Doremisoft PDF to EPUB Converter you can quickly convert PDF to .epub files, which you can then transfer to your iPad for reading in iBooks app.

With Mac PDF to EPUB Converter everyone can write an e-book with full control over how it will look on Mac OS X. All you need is to add your PDF files to the program and click “Convert” to convert an PDF file to ePub to read in iBooks app on iPad, iPhone 4, iPod Touch,etc.

With this tool users have immediate feedback about how their ePub format e-book will look like. Mac PDF to EPUB Converter give their users options to customize the output ePub documents. Here’s how you can convert PDF ebook format into ePub on Mac OS X.

Guide on how to convert PDF to ePub for iPad, iPhone 4, iTouch on Mac OS?

Step 0: Download PDF to EPUB Converter For Mac program, install and run it on Mac OS X.

Step 1: Load PDF document to the converter
Click “Add Files”, then locate and select your PDF, PDF to EPUB Converter for Mac allows you to add multiple PDF files to convert each time.

Step 2: Customize output settings
1. Click on the gear icon on the selected PDF file in the panel, then you are allowed to customize page range for the PDF files to convert. Default page range for conversion is All pages. 2. Select the folder you want to save all of your ePub files in.

Step 3: Choose converting mode
There are 2 options for you to customize the output files: “Text and images to ePub” (Keep Original, Ignore Images or Ignore Hyperlinks) and “Each pages as image to ePub”

Step 4: Start the conversion from PDF to ePub
After customizing the output settings, click Convert button to convert PDF to ePub.

Now you have converted your PDF files to EPUB eBooks, you can easily sync the ePub eBooks with iPad right away! Feel free to download the Mac PDF to EPUB Converter and have an try yourself.

Doremisoft PDF to EPUB Converter for Mac Make A Difference

September 1, 2020 Technology No comments