Self Signed SSL Certificates

From Leo's Notes
Revision as of 00:03, 30 March 2015 by Leo (talk | contribs)
This page was last edited on 30 March 2015, at 00:03.

Self-signed SSL certificates can be used to set up a temporary or personal SSL web server. It may be useful in cases where you don't want to spend money for security or if you distrust all certificate authorities

To quickly generate a self-signed certificate, enter a domain name below and follow the instructions: <htmlet nocache="yes">selfsignedssl-js</htmlet>

On a computer with OpenSSL installed, run the following commands individually since you will be prompted for a secure password: <htmlet nocache="yes">selfsignedssl-cmd</htmlet>

To configure apache to use the newly created key and SSL certificate, create a new VirtualHost with the configuration below: <htmlet nocache="yes">selfsignedssl-apache</htmlet>

Trusting Your Self Signed SSL Certificates

The key and certificate generated with the steps above will not be signed by a trusted certificate authority and therefore cannot be verified by your browser, resulting in a security warning.


Other Notes

Note: Ensure that all keys are not readable to others. chmod 700 the ssl directory and chmod 600 all the keys.

openssl req -new -x509 -key www.example.com.key -out www.example.com.cert -days 3650 -subj /CN=www.example.com


See Also