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Self Signed & Free Certificates

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What are self-signed certificates (OpenSSL)?

  • Generated using OpenSSL: You can generate these certificates yourself without any cost.
  • Not Trusted by Browsers: Browsers and operating systems do not recognize self-signed certificates as trusted because they are not signed by a recognized Certificate Authority (CA). This results in security warnings when users visit your site.
  • Use Cases: Self-signed certificates are typically used for internal testing, development environments, or intranets where trust can be manually configured.

What are Let'sEncrypt Certificates?

  • Generated using Let's Encrypt: Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open CA that provides SSL/TLS certificates.
  • Trusted by Browsers: Certificates from Let's Encrypt are recognized and trusted by all major browsers, ensuring that users won't see security warnings when visiting your site.
  • Automation: The process can be automated using tools like Certbot, which handles the issuance and renewal of certificates.
  • Free: These certificates are provided at no cost.

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OpenSSL

using OpenSSL, you can generate a private key and a CSR to either:

  1. Send to a Certificate Authority (CA) to obtain a certificate that will be trusted by browsers and other clients.
  2. Generate a self-signed certificate for your own use, which will not be trusted by browsers by default but can be useful in certain scenarios.

/etc/ssl

perms for SSL files needs to be 600

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Generating a private key and CSR

Generate a private key:

generating a private key is a prerequisite for creating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). The private key is essential because it is used to sign the CSR and is part of the SSL/TLS certificate generation process.

openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048 -out keyfilename.key

Generate a CSR:

A Certificate Signing Request (CSR) is a block of encoded text that is given to a Certificate Authority (CA) when applying for an SSL/TLS certificate. The CSR contains information about the organization and the public key that will be included in the certificate.

openssl req -new -key keyfilename.key -out csrfilename.csr

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Generating a certificate

Using the steps above, you will generate a private key and CSR file. We can then use these files to generate a self-signed certificate.

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in csrfilename.csr -signkey keyfilename.key -out crtfilename.crt

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LetsEncrypt

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Apache 

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-apache-with-let-s-encrypt-on-centos-7  

Running certbot for a single domain
sudo certbot --apache -d example.com
Running certbot for multiple domains (or subdomains)
sudo certbot --apache -d example.com -d www.example.com
Auto Renewal

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Nginx

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-nginx-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-20-04   

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com
Generate a certificate to be manually installed
certbot certonly -manual -d example.com -d example.com --webroot -w /path/to/doc/root

Auto Renewal
systemctl status certbot.timer

test renewal:

certbot renew --dry-run
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