Skip to main content

How to generate a self-signed certificate with Openssl (using git windows bash)

I recently needed to generate a self-signed certificate to test a website locally. I wasn't familiar with the process, and I wanted to share here what I learned.

First, we need a private key. A private key is a long series of characters that must be kept secret. In my context, it will be used to encrypt messages before the client and the server, in a way secure enough to prevent anybody to spy on them.

Once the private key is created, we need to generate another file that will be the "signature" of our certificate. Among other data, this file will contains some information specific to the server's context: country, organization's name, email address of the organization's technical contact, etc.

Once this signature is established, there are two paths:

- Path A: If we want our server to be publicly accessible, every browser in the world must able to trust the certificate. In order for that to happen, we need to send our signature file to one of the official SSL Certificate authorities (Comodo SSL, Symantec SSL, etc.). Those authorities are known by every browsers. Sending the signature file is called a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

- Path B: For local use, it's also possible to self-signed the certificate. If we were to use this certificate in a public context, the web browsers would display a security alert to the user, saying that the certificate cannot be trusted.

 All those steps can be done with openssl. I have created a bash script to make the process easier and not have to remember each command. You can find it the gist on github here. This script will ask you for the required information, and generate a self-signed certificate (so not to be used for a public server). The comments in the file should be enough to match with the steps described in this article

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Windows 11, bootable USB device not detected

 I recently needed to install a linux server on a new computer. The current operating system was windows 11. I decided to go with Ubuntu server. After following their instructions on how to download and create an .ISO image with Rufus , I had a problem: my USB key was not detected by the new computer as a bootable key. It turned our that the solution was the USB version. My USB key was 2.0. After doing exactly the same operation on a USB 3.0 device, everything worked fine. Bonus tip: on windows, to boot from a device, it's possible to restart the computer while holding the SHIFT key. The computer will restart and then display a menu from which you can access the different ways of booting your system. This menu will include any bootable device. Hope it helps!
Post a Comment
Read more

How to use wxWidgets on Windows with a Makefile

 Hello! I wanted to learn GUI rpogramming in C++. One of the main libraries for this purpose is called wxWidgets. It's very popular and seem powerful enough to make even a complex graphical interface. I also liked the fact that it's multi platforms. I am on Windows, using MingW and I like coding with VS Code. I also like having a clear Makefile to generate my programs. So here is how I have managed to compile the Hello World program you can find on the wxWidgets website . First, go to their github repository and clone it in a folder you will keep on your computer. In the root directory, run the command git submodule update --init. If the clone operation has not done so already, this command will pull additional repositories needed by wxWidget. Go to build\msw. Run the command: mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc -j4 SHARED=1 UNICODE=1 BUILD=debug clean. It will delete any unwanted file. Once it's done, re run the command but without the clean instruction. This will build the lib...
Post a Comment
Read more

Installing Postgres on Linux Lite (Ubuntu)

I have followed these instructions from the Postgres documentation : # Create the file repository configuration: sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list' # Import the repository signing key: wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add - # Update the package lists: sudo apt-get update # Install the latest version of PostgreSQL. # If you want a specific version, use 'postgresql-12' or similar instead of 'postgresql': sudo apt-get -y install postgresql   After that, I was having trouble authenticating to Postgresql after installing the db server on Linux Lite.  This stackoverflow answer was very helpful. Open the file pg_hba.conf . For Ubuntu, use for example /etc/postgresql/13/main$ sudo nano pg_hba.conf and change this line at the bottom of the file, it should be the first line of the settings: local all ...
Post a Comment
Read more