I have been using a wildcard SSL certificate for several of my company's B2B websites for some time. Recently, we noticed that Google Chrome started displaying a red unlocked lock with HTTPS crossed out for all of these websites. The solution I found was to reissue the certificate from the provider (Network Solutions). So, I did this, and updated the certificate for each of the websites, and the Google Chrome issue went away (HOORAY!). However, when visiting any of these websites in Firefox, it displays a security message stating the website is using an invalid security certificate:
How can I resolve this so that our users are not confused when visiting these websites?
P.S. These websites are running on IIS6.
It looks as if the certificate chain is incomplete and, thus, Firefox (and likely other browsers) cannot verify the site certificate. Normally browsers store intermediate certificates they have seen in the past - that might be a reason why it works in Chrome.
You can test using https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html.
Depending on the server software (here, for Apache httpd and other servers which read the certificate in PEM/DER format), you can just paste the intermediate certificates together with the certificate in one .pem file (which is used as Certificate file).
The chain (intermediate certificates) is/are normally provided by your CA. In your case you could also use Chrome the review the certificate and then store/extract all intermediate certificates from the certificate view.
You can get this certificate is not trusted error if server doesn't send a required intermediate certificate.
Firefox automatically stores intermediate certificates that servers send in the Certificate Manager for future usage.
If a server doesn't send a full certificate chain then you won't get an untrusted error when Firefox has stored missing intermediate certificates from visiting a server in the past that has send it, but you do get an untrusted error if this intermediate certificate isn't stored yet.
You can inspect the certificate chain via a site like this:
http://www.networking4all.com/en/support/tools/site+check/
I followed the instructions at enter link description here, to import the intermediate certificates.
In IIS, there is an option under Directory Security to "Enable certificate trust list". I enabled it and added the "AddTrust External CA Root" to the CTL certificates list and this appears to have fixed the issue.
Related
I'm fairly new to the whole certificate shebang and not a versed Linux admin.
In our company, we run a Windows domain, but we also have some CentOS servers for different services.
On one of said servers we have our ticket system, which is browser based. I want to certify it with a certificate, signed by our Windows root CA, but no matter what I do, the certificate is shown as invalid in the browser.
Funny enough, both certificates in the chain (CA -> server) are shown as valid.
I already did the following:
start certificate process from scratch
tried different certificate formats (.cer, .pem)
verified server cert with root cert
checked validity with openssl (OK)
checked SSL connection with openssl, no issues
added root cert to Linux server trusted CA store
recreated cert chain (of 2)
restarted Apache over and over
reset browser cache
tried different browser
checked DNS entries
checked, if root CA is trusted in Windows (it is)
manually installed server cert in my browser
Both the server cert and the root cert show up as valid in the browser, with the correct relation.
I'm completely lost here. Is there some key step I forgot and not one of the ~30 guides I read forgot to mention?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Your question is missing some information:
Did you check the SSL connection from outside the server?
Did you verify the RootCA cert is inside the cert-store of the server (sometimes it is rejected without error messages)?
I would check the reason for rejecting the certificate in the browser (FireFox is usually more informative than Chrome), and look for the error-code.
Reasons can be (some of which you have already verified):
Wrong certificate properties (missing the required values in the "usage" attribute)
Wrong domain name
Expired certificate
Certificate could not be verified on the client-side
See this image as an example of an error code:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/165314/71407838-14f55a00-2634-11ea-8a30-c119d2eb1eb1.png
I have been managing Let's Encrypt's SSL certificates for a domain.
Now I am moving to Amazon API gateway. I will be using the AWS Certificate Manager to generate HTTPS certificates for the root domain and a bunch of subdomains.
If I make the transfer, what happens to my current HTTPS certificate which is associated with my domain. If browsers suddenly start seeing a new HTTPS certificate for a domain, for which they had been getting a different HTTPS certificate until now, would this be a problem?
Also, once I make the shift, what do I do with my current (manually managed) Let's Encrypt certificate? Is there a way to permanently void it?
Szabolcs Dombi says
You can have multiple valid certificates for the same domain at the
same time. Moving from one certificate issuer to another should not
cause a problem.
Toby Osbourn says
SSL certificates don’t last forever, most of them need to be renewed
on a yearly cycle and occasionally you will want to change the type of
the SSL certificate mid-cycle.
Since you are replacing certificates, I suggest you to back up the ones you have.
Once you have backed up the old certificates, just overwrite the .crt and .key files with your new ones. Then, reload your web server so it knows to look at these new certificates, and you should be good to go.
If it's within your interest to know more about how to Generate SSL certificate using Amazon Certificate Manager (ACM), I suggest Barguzar, A. (July 2018). Building Serverless Python Web Services with Zappa. where one can read a good step by step guide. See an excerpt of it below:
ACM is a service that manages and creates SSL/TSL certificates for
AWS-based services and applications. An ACM certificate works with
multiple domain names and subdomains. You can also use ACM to create a
wildcard SSL.
ACM is strictly linked with AWS Certificate Manager Private
Certificate Authority (ACM PCA). ACM PCA is responsible for validating
the domain authority and issuing the certificate.
You can have multiple valid certificates for the same domain at the same time. Moving from one certificate issuer to another should not cause a problem.
This also means that if you create a new certificate the old one still can be used unless it already expired.
I want my site to be secure using HTTPS protocols. I managed to make a self-signed key to be trustedCertEntry as I made my own CA certificate, with different CN, which I used to sign my own private certificate.
It works smooth testing it with openssl with something like:
openssl s_client -connect www.mydomain.com:80 -tls1 -state
Thus, browser doesn't report a certificate self-signed error, as it sees a different CA.
But I get a SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER error. Still it seems logical to me as nobody knows me as a CA. It is supposed to work if user adds exception for me.
I thought this trick was acceptable and it was like many https compliant sites were working, as you may visit a unknown site and you want to encrypt communications from 3rd party watchers but trust that page.
After trying to get a clear response for it, beyond coding that I will find resources, my question is:
If I want to have a site, for which the users don't have to add an exception in the first visit, do I have to get a certificate from a "world-known" CA? Or am I missing a solution for self-signing my certificate with my own CA certificate?
Technically speaking, the answer is: Yes, you will have to get a certificate from a CA that is trusted by your users' browsers via a chain of intermediary CA's that ends at an inherently trusted root CA. The accepted answer to this question explains how it works: SSL Certificate framework 101: How does the browser actually verify the validity of a given server certificate?
Having said that, if your "only" concern is to provide encrypted connections, you might be able to leverage the Let's Encrypt CA, which provides free certificates for that purpose. Those certificates will be only domain-validated, which provides a weaker kind of assurance of identity than, for example, an Extended Validation Certificate.
Depending on the browser used, there will be minimal difference in user experience between DV and EV certificates. For Safari, the user will see a grey padlock in the address bar for the lower assurance DV-backed sites, like this:
and a green padlock when higher identity assurance is provided, like this:
Whether the former is good enough for you (or your customers) depends on your situation.
In case you want to understand what "inherently trusted" actually means for web browsers, see this blog post: Who your browser trusts, and how to control it.
Full disclosure, I asked this question over at Ask Different (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/96776/always-get-a-security-error-for-internal-https-website) but didn't get much helpful feedback. I'm hoping this question fits better here.
My company recently changed an internal site to use HTTPS instead of HTTP (it is our Jira site in case that matters). From what I can tell, this site is using an internal certificate. On our work computers this certificate appears to be pre installed so the website comes up without trouble in IE, Firefox, and Chrome. However, my personal computer is a Mac (OS X 10.8.4) and I am having major troubles accessing the site through any browser. I have followed instructions to install the certificate in my Keychain and I believe I have successfully done that, but I am still not able to access the site.
When Accessing the site I Get:
Chrome: Invalid Server Certificate You attempted to reach jira.surescripts.local, but the server presented an invalid certificate.
Safari: Safari can't open the page Safari can't open the page "https://jira.local:8081/" because Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server "jira.local"
In Chrome when I view the certificate information it I see: Intermediate certificate authority. Expires: Thursday, May 21, 2015 1:19:28 PM Central Daylight Time. This certificate is valid
To make sure that it wasn't something strange with our company's VPN, I installed a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac and installed the certificate in Windows and am able to successfully log on to the site how I always would.
I am not much of an expert with certificates and I really don't know where to go from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
It almost sounds like you need to trust a self-signed certificate? Perhaps follow: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/SOURCETREEKB/Resolving+SSL+Self-Signed+Certificate+Errors
Sefl signed certificate always triger warnings in web browsers.
To validate a server certificate you must have in the client browser the CA certificate wich was used to sign the SSL server certificate.
Your company should create a CA cert, then create a server SSL cert. signed with the CA and put it on the web server. The clients install public part of the CA cert in "Trusted CA" certificate store. When client conect to the web server the server sent the signed SSL certificate, the client check if it is a "trusted" cert (was signed by a trusted CA) and if everithing is Ok the client doesn't show the warning.
You ended with this cert chain:
CA cert->SSL cert
CA cert public part is installed in client broser as trusted CA. SSL is put in the web server. Client validate SSL cert agaist its Trusted CA certs installed in its Certificate Stores.
It is like CyberTrus CA. You can see how you have Baltimore Cyber Trust Root and Cybertrust Public SureServer SB CA installed in your computer and when you enter into https://www.bancosantander.es/cssa/Satellite?pagename=SantanderComercial/Page/SAN_Index you can see that *.bancosantander.es certificate is valid because you are trusting in the chain.
Your company needs to create the root, then create the SSL signed by the root. The root (public part) is distributed to the client for install. The server sends the SSL to client in HTTPS protocol.
Check this link for more info.
The problem is probably the encryption protocols that your Mac and the company web site don't match up.
Safari Browsers for OS X before Safari 7 (up to 6.0.7 which was on OS X 10.8.4) use the SSL 3.0 protocol, which has vulnerabilities and is considered insecure. Most newer and well-designed web sites use TLS 1.1 and/or TLS 1.2.
Browser encryption capabilities for Safari 6.0.4
Find out from your company if that is what is set up. The same site that has the specs I linked to allow you to enter a web site, and they'll throw a battery of test transactions at it to test it's security and what will connect, but I doubt you can use that for an internal site. Ask your IT folks what encryption protocols they are using.
As a solution, I believe there are versions of Firefox and/or Chrome that can run on 10.8.4 that use TLS 1.2.
List of major browser versions that support TLS 1.2
I got a task on my Security classes. I have to generate two RSA keys (A and B), treat B as CA and then:
For key A:
Generate a certificate request.
Receive certificate from CA.
Use this key and the coresponding certificate in my local HTTPS server (XAMPP)
For key B:
Become a CA.
Generate a certificate for A.
Import this CA certificate in browser.
The result should be a nice green padlock in Chrome's address bar. However, after all this steps I've only managed to get rid of "Entering untrusted site" warning, but the red padlock is still there. The information says:
localhost
Identity not veryfied.
The identity of the server to which you are connected cannot be fully validated.
Any suggestions?
With the commentary I received, I was able to successfully resolve the issue.
However, it seems that Google Chrome has additional security rules when compared to Firefox. Using Mozilla's browser I haven't noticed any warnings concerning my certificate.