About Self-Signed Certificates
A SSL
certificate is a way to encrypt a site's information and create a more secure
connection. Additionally, the certificate can show the virtual private server's
identification information to site visitors. Certificate Authorities can issue
SSL certificates that verify the virtual server's details while a self-signed
certificate has no 3rd party corroboration.
Step One—Install Mod SSL
In
order to set up the self signed certificate, we first have to be sure that
Apache and Mod SSL are installed on our VPS. You can install both with one
command:
yum
install mod_ssl
Step Two—Create a New Directory
Next,
we need to create a new directory where we will store the server key and
certificate
mkdir
/etc/httpd/ssl
Step Three—Create a Self Signed Certificate
When
we request a new certificate, we can specify how long the certificate should
remain valid by changing the 365 to the number of days we prefer. As it stands
this certificate will expire after one year.
openssl
req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/httpd/ssl/apache.key
-out /etc/httpd/ssl/apache.crt
With this command, we will be both creating the
self-signed SSL certificate and the server key that protects it, and placing
both of them into the new directory.
This command will prompt terminal to display a
lists of fields that need to be filled in.
The most important line is "Common
Name". Enter your official domain name here or, if you don't have one yet,
your site's IP address.
You
are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into
your certificate request.
What
you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There
are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For
some fields there will be a default value,
If
you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country
Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State
or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New York
Locality
Name (eg, city) []:NYC
Organization
Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Awesome Inc
Organizational
Unit Name (eg, section) []:Dept of Merriment
Common
Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:example.com
Email
Address []:webmaster@awesomeinc.com
Step Four—Set Up the Certificate
Now
we have all of the required components of the finished certificate.The next
thing to do is to set up the virtual hosts to display the new certificate.
Open up the SSL config file:
vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf
Find the section that begins with <VirtualHost
_default_:443> and make some quick changes.
Uncomment the DocumentRoot and ServerName line
and replace example.com with your DNS approved domain name or server IP address
(it should be the same as the common name on the certificate):
ServerName example.com:443
Find the following three lines, and make sure
that they match the extensions below:
SSLEngine
on
SSLCertificateFile
/etc/httpd/ssl/apache.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile
/etc/httpd/ssl/apache.key
Your
virtual host is now all set up! Save and Exit out of the file.
Step Five—Restart Apache
You
are done. Restarting the Apache server will reload it with all of your changes
in place.
/etc/init.d/httpd restart
In your browser, type https://youraddress to view the new
certificate.
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