Open source certificate authority software - certificate

I am looking for a open source implementations of certificate authority software, where I want to generate Root CA certificate and install it on my client machines, and generate SSL certificates for my local websites and install it on the webservers.
I believe, if I install root CA certificate on my client machines, the browsers wouldn't be showing me the certificate errors ... is that right ??
I found this wiki node http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority and they have a list of open source softwares: EJBCA, OpenCA, OpenSSL, gnoMint, DogTag, XCA, r509.
I am not sure which one will a be good choice for me, if anyone has any experience with it please share with us.

You are right regarding browser complaining about certificate. If you install Root CA certificate into your trusted certificate store and server certificates will be signed by this Root CA, you won't see error messages any more.
I think for your purposes OpenSSL is what you need. You should be able to create all necessary certificates in just several commands.

Related

Signing Powershell Script with External CA

I have read through this post on signing a PowerShell script with a certificate. This is more on using external certificate from VeriSign (or similar) to encode and protect the code I have developed within a PowerShell script.
I am just trying to find out if this will actually work. I would expect the process to go as:
Purchase code-signing certificate from VeriSign
Install certificate on my computer
Sign the PowerShell script
Execute the script on desired device
Since this script would be signed with a external CA wouldn't Windows be able to authenticate the certificate since Windows trust VeriSign root CA? My guess would be since Windows has the root CA for VeriSign already and trust it, if I happen on a system that does not allow Internet access that the certificate will still be verified and allow me to run it?
That should work. I've never tried it, though, but your logic makes sense.
I looked at the cert store on my Win7 machine and it has an Oracle code signing cert issued by "Verisign Class 3 Code Signing 2010 CA". That CA is an intermediate CA. The root CA is "Verisign Class 3 Public Primary Certification AUthority - G5". That root CA is in Windows trusted root CA store. So what I gather from this is:
That yes you can do it - Oracle does it
Verisign does issue code signing certs, but they are signed with an intermediate CA.
This means Windows has to obtain this cert somehow. The Verisign
intermediate cert does have the "Authority Info Access" field which
is one way Windows can retrieve an intermediate cert. But the
machine would have to be able to access the internet.
An alternative (if internet access isn't available) is to install the intermediate cert on your users' machines. Could be part of an installer. I think that must be what Oracle did on my machine
For an Authenticode EXE, another alternative (if machine can't access
internet) is to make sure intermediate cert was embedded in the
authenticode signature in the EXE. However I don't know if
Powershell would support that.
As another confirmation you could call/email Verisign to verify their support.
Executing the script on desired device still requires you to set the execution policy to at least AllSigned on that device. And you will still get a question if you want to trust this publisher, unless you add the certificate to the device or the domain. See here.

Trusted Root Certificate Automatically disappear on client SSL connection

I have this weirdest problem. First off: I'm VERY new to this certificate thingy. I've done a fair amount of searches and reading up though.
The CA Cert that I install into the Trusted Root Certificate
Authorities store in my server automatically get removed/disappeared
as soon as a client web-browser try to connect to a web-site using an
SSL cert created with that CA cert.
DETAILS:
Windows Server 2008 R2 (development server).
I've created my own Certificate Authority Cert; which I use it to generate an SSL server cert (to install on my IIS 7 Server) and a client cert (for use at my local PC to connect to the WCF Webservice on the development server which is set to Require SSL and Require Client Cert).
I installed the CA Cert into the Trusted Root on both Server and local PC.
Installed the SSL server cert into the IIS7 for that particular site and did the https binding to port 443.
As soon as I launch my browser to access that site with HTTPS, the CA
cert in automatically removed on the server (from the Trusted Root
Certificate Authorities store). and my local PC browser will report
an error 403.
This is driving me nuts... anyone knows what is happening?
Apparently, after a lot of running around, it is due to too many of the same certs in many stores.
I open the MMC.exe > Add/Remove SnapIns > Certificates
Notice there are 3 types there (My User Account, Service Account & Computer Account).
Open up My User and Computer Account, go through all the stores for each one and DELETE all of the CA cert with the same name. Then add the CA cert in either My User Account or Computer Account, depending on how you access the certs (in the event of the cert being used programatically, install it in the Computer Account, [Trusted Root Certificate Authorities].
Just 1 place, then the problem will dissappear.

Do I have to install the certificate before accessing an https url?

I'm not clear about the authorization of certificate: a website has been associated with a certificate, say https://test.mysite.com. Do I have to install the certificate on my computer before access this url?
Another question is: every certificate is issued by a CA. If I have trusted a CA before by "installing" a cerficiate, will I trust the all the following certificates issued by the same CA?
Thanks!
It depends on the library or browser you are using to access to the URL but, if the certificate is issued by a trusted CA (one that your library or browser already trusts), the web site's certificate does not need to be installed before accessing the site.
If the CA is not trusted, there are two options. One is to trust the certificate. Browsing to the page will usually open a dialog where the user can choose to trust the certificate, for example. The second is to add the CA to the list of trusted CAs. On Windows, this is done by adding the CA's certificate to the "Trusted Root Authorities" certificate store. The latter case means any other certificate issued by the CA will also be trusted.

why ssl of Entrust ssl certificate is required for APNS

Hi all
why apple has given link of entrust ssl ,is it necessary ?
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/CommunicatingWIthAPS/CommunicatingWIthAPS.html
see at first note:
Note: To establish a TLS session with APNs, an Entrust Secure CA root certificate must be installed on the provider’s server. If the server is running Mac OS X, this root certificate is already in the keychain. On other systems, the certificate might not be available. You can download this certificate from the Entrust SSL Certificates website.
Yes, the certificate is necessary to establish a TLS session with APNs.
But you don't need to buy a certificate from Entrust. (I guess this was what you thought, because there are huge $xxx for a certificate boxes on the Entrust website)
The APNs uses a secure connection to a server that uses a certificate from Entrust. And this connection would fail when the CA root certificate wouldn't be installed on your computer. All "regular" certificates are only valid if the root certificate is known to your computer. And this is the file that they want you to download.
But most likely the Entrust Secure CA root cert is already installed. I used APNs from Ubuntu, and Arch Linux, and I installed nothing from Entrust. This is from my arch install, all necessary root ca certificates are already there:
[root#dellbook certs]# ls /etc/ssl/certs/Entrust*
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust.net_Global_Secure_Personal_CA.pem
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust.net_Global_Secure_Server_CA.pem
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust.net_Premium_2048_Secure_Server_CA.pem
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust.net_Secure_Personal_CA.pem
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust.net_Secure_Server_CA.pem
/etc/ssl/certs/Entrust_Root_Certification_Authority.pem
It appears that you don't have to buy one of the Entrust certificates; you just have to download the certificate authority certificate (which is free) from their website. Apple should have made this more clear. I found the current link to this, which may not work forever, but for now here it is: https://www.entrustdatacard.com/pages/root-certificates-download

JBoss Certificate Issue

We are using JBoss 5.1. We have deployed a web service and wish to add certificate functionality. We have created a CA and a certificate signed by that CA (we used openssl and the java keytool to create the .keystore file). We imported both the CA and the certificate in the .keystore file and pointed the connector (in server.xml) on that .keystore:
The common name used for the CA is aname.com while the common name for the certificate is hostname. The validity period of the certificate is almost one year while for the CA is a little more.
Trying to access the web service url (https://hostname:8443/path_to_webservice) with Internet Explorer we get the error that our certificate is not issued by a trusted certificate authority.
When we select to view the certificate in the browser, we get a certificate that is issued for hostname, issued by hostname and its validity period is only 3 months. Obviously, the certificate we get from Internet Explorer is very different than the one we created.
How can I solve this issue? Is it a certificate issue or do I need to make some changes in JBoss?
Is it a certificate issue or do I need to make some changes in JBoss?
While I'm not able to provide you a precise answer, I'll provide you some guiding questions that may help you solve the problem :-) Are you able to import this certificate (the pem file, which you used to create the keystore file) in a browser? What about the fingerprint, does it looks the same as the one stored in the JBoss? Does this bogus certificate reminds you of any previous attempt?
I'd say that this is most certainly a problem with the certificate itself, as I don't believe JBoss is able to fake your certificate :-)