Latest ssl posts

Tips for SSL certificates

Display CSR information:

openssl req -text -noout -in foo.csr

Display signed cert information:

openssl x509 -in foo.crt.pem -noout -text

To remove a password from a key:

openssl rsa -in foo.key.pem -out foo-unlocked.key.pem

To decode a CRL:

openssl crl -text -in ca.crl.pem

To check a certificate against a CRL:

cat ca/ca.crl.pem ca/ca.crt.pem > crl-check.pem
openssl verify -CAfile crl-check.pem -crl_check foo.crt.pem

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Self-Signing Certificate Authorities

Introduction

If you run a website which receives or displays personal information, passwords or other secrets, you need to encrypt your connections using SSL or TLS. This is what puts the "S" into HTTPS, FTPS, IMAPS, POPS etc, and requires private keys and public certificates. Your browser (or other SSL/TLS client) trusts certain CAs (certificate authorities), and they in turn are willing to trust you by issuing you a certificate, if you throw money at them.

This is necessary for public-facing production deployments, and these days the cheapest certificates don't cost the earth - for example, Namecheap's start ...

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POODLE

I have been meaning to get back on the blogging horse for some time, and what better way than with a new SSL vulnerability.

POODLE was announced this morning. It's a 5/10 on the panic scale, but both users and sysadmins should take action now.

This one isn't particularly exciting compared to the recent sky-is-falling heartbleed and shellshock - instead of giving away all your secrets and/or shell access to anyone with curl, the worst-case scenario with POODLE is that someone can read your SSL traffic; still bad, but for most people running small sites it's ...

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