When a user selects using the ssl of web browser, for example,
a user selects the option of using ssl in FireFox, how the Web browser sets the ssl connection? Does the browser has a public key ?
The browser has public keys from root certificate authorities. If a key from a website is signed by one of the root CA's in the browser, it can be verified as trustworthy automatically and ssl communication can start. Otherwise, you get prompted by the unknown/self-signed certificate dialog and decide for yourself whether to trust it or not.
When a user selects the option of using ssl in firefox,it allows the the browser to establish connection with ssl enabled websites.The browser has a set of root certificate authorities like verisign which are well known around the world.So when a website gives a certificate signed by these CAs then our browser automatically recognizes the identity of the website.However,if that certificate is signed by a unknown authority ,then the browser gives a pop-up of unknown certificate and it depends on the user to trust it or not.If you trust it then it gets installed in your browser and that pop up does not come up the next time you connect to that website.Similarly,some websites require client certificates in order to recognize the client.In that case,you need to install your certificate(generally provided by them to a set of users) in the browser so that those websites can identify you.You can say that it is a two communication and involves exchange of certificates from both server and client.
Related
I get the following error message.
You have asked Firefox to connect securely to www.gstatic.com, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.
Normally, when you try to connect securely, sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are going to the right place. However, this site's identity can't be verified.
What Should I Do?
If you usually connect to this site without problems, this error could mean that someone is trying to impersonate the site, and you shouldn't continue.
This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.
www.gstatic.com uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.
The server might not be sending the appropriate intermediate certificates.
An additional root certificate may need to be imported.
(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)
Can someone please help me to solve this issue :'(
You're receiving this error message because the certificate for the site isn't valid. In order to communicate using SSL with a site, the site must provide a valid certificate. There are a number of things necessary for a valid certificate, but one factor is the certificate must be issued by a trusted certificate authority, or CA. Your browser is preconfigured with a set of trusted CAs, but for this particular site, the issuer is not part of that set of trusted authorities.
Furthermore, since the site is using HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), an exception cannot be made for this certificate.
You'll need to view the certificate and see who issued the certificate (the CA) and whether that is a real CA. The certificate may be self-signed, which means the site issued their own certificate without a trusted CA. If you wish to continue, you'll have to install the issuer's certificate as a trusted CA in your browser. However, do not install the issuer's certificate if you cannot verify their identity as a trusted CA.
This article on your particular error may provide guidance on why you're seeing this message. Here's a general description on how SSL works and what roles certificates and CAs play.
With regard to the first solution, if you end up having to install a CA cert into your Firefox browser, click Edit Trust and check the "This certificate can identify websites" checkbox. If that checkbox is not checked, then Firefox will still not trust websites who issue certificates signed by that CA.
Our team has a Windows 2008 server which is used primary for a common IIS dev box.
I want to enable SSL on one of the websites on IIS, so that it can only be accessed via HTTPS.
I created a self-signing certificate in IIS and installed it. However when I access the website via the browser (Chrome, Firefox or IE - doesn't matter), it always gives the scary..."this is not secure" screen. I've tried installing the certificate on my own computer, rebooting and I still get that screen.
One thing that I noticed is when I create a self-signed certificate, it adds the domain name to it...for instance, the name of the box is webIIS and our login domain is COMPANYDOMAIN. So it will say that the certificate was created by webIIS.COMPANYDOMAIN.com. This url resolves to nothing, since there is no such thing.
Am I going about it the wrong way?
I've answered a similar question here.
Few afterwords:
Your server should have a dns name. If it is in a domain (Active directory or something) it surely does. Find it, use it in CN of the SSL certificate.
CA that will issue SSL certificate should be trusted by clients accessing the server and by the server itself. Place CA certificate in Trusted Root Store (in LocalMachine store) on the server and all clients that will access it. If you have Active Directory it should be pretty simple to distribute it.
CRL that CA has to issue in defined intervals (it's up to you if the CRL will be issued one a day, month, year or lifetime) has to be accessible by clients and server. Either place it at http url that you gave when issuing SSL certificate or manually place in each certificate store (in Trusted Root Store).
I'm new to mutual SSL. Therefore my understanding how client certifcates might be wrong.
When using Client certificates in IIS, do they need to be issued from the same certificate (or CA) as the IIS HTTPS binding has configured?
My dev IIS has a self signed certificate.
For the client certificate, I've created a CA and a Client certificate according to
the post here.
The CA is in my "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" of the local Computer.
The Client certificate is in my personal certificate folder.
On IIS I've set Client certificates to accept.
The first strange Thing is that when I browse to my page, the IE always shows me 403.7. Even I've disabled the IE setting "Don't prompt for client certificate selection...", there is no window opening for the certificate selection.
Also when accessing the page with a HttpWebRequest with Client cert attached, the response is always 403. Unfortunately there I did not figure out how to get the sub status.
Why doesn't IIS accept my Client certificate when the RootCA of the Client certificate is in the trusted root store?
Is there a way to get more details where the problem might be?
Thanks
Thomas
Finally could solve the issue:
The CA and Client certificates which I generated according to the tutorial here did NOT have the private key assigned in the certificate store. I had to remove the certificates from the cert store and Import the PFX file including the private key.
Second, the client certificate needs to be in the Current User/Personal store so IE does pick it up. I initallly generated it in the Current Computer/Personal store.
There might be a direct way how to create the two certificates including Private key with makecert. But the PFX import was the easiest way for me.
After 3 days of try and error on my side: If you use IIS10 on Windows2022, TLS1.3 is turned on by default.
The SSL handshake seems not to be implemented correctly in browsers/curls/.... for this case.
For testing reasons turn off TLS1.3
In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.3\Server
Add:
DisabledByDefault as Dword with 1 and restart the server (not only IIS!)
I have created my SSL certificate using Selssl7.exe on server1 but used Cn as Server2 and hosted the certificate on server2. I started to get a certificate error when browsing from linux firefox saying:
This certificate is invalid, the certificate is not trusted and is self signed, the certificate is only valid for server1
But when I browse the URL from Windows IE I just get the regular error saying that it's not trusted and I can easily add it to exceptions.
Can we use self-signed certificates generated on server1 on a different servers?
You can and you may but you are pretty much undermining each and every aspect of authenticity by doing so.
A self-signed certificate is generally a problem because other users will not know this certificate in advance. So their browser dutifully issues a warning. That's why you have to pay for TLS certificates that will be recognized - they are issued by CAs whose certificates are contained in the default trust store of your browser. CAs had to pay to "be part of the club", but otherwise, anyone can create certificates. It's just the matter of being recognized by default settings.
But you open another hole by reusing a certificate that was issued for a dedicated server on a different server. TLS certificates' subject distinguished names must match the host name of the server they are deployed on. This is mandated by the TLS spec because this is the only effective measure to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks when using TLS. After you open a TLS connection to a server, your code will check whether the host name that you are connected to matches the subject DN of the server's certificate that was sent. Only if it does you can be sure to be talking to the right server.
So, in conclusion, if you reuse a server certificate on a different host, then you are severely impacting the security of TLS. It's still possible, sure, but if you cripple security to this extent, then you are probably better off using plain HTTP in the first place.
What do I need to configure in Tomcat6 which will prevent user from adding an exception on browser when they access my website?
The case with me is that every time a new user is accessing my website then the add an exception page comes up and I do not need this. Kindly help.
Thanks
The SSL certificate that you install in your tomcat must be signed by a Certificate Authority that your browser recognizes as trusted.
Meaning that you have two possibilities:
1) Let your server-side certificate be signed by a known Certificate Authority like Verisign, this will cost you some money
2) Create an own Certificate Authority and 'distribute' it to your clients which will have to install it in their browser as trusted CA