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Web security certificates

Web security certificates

Postby ar1stotle » Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:30 am

OK, I'm just curious.... what are they, how do they work, and how can you renew them? Our school system allows us to check our grades from home, but the security certificate expired last month (https://stihome.stpsb.org if you want to see for yourself). Basically, I never really knew what they did, but I'm wondering how I can renew it. I know I can't do it from my house, but since next year I'm going to be a senior and I want a good intern position I'm wondering if I can look like a beast and fix this for them at their office lol.
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Postby shougan » Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:14 pm

Well, being a beast is always fun!

So here what you basically need to know. The Certificates are purchased from companies like Verisign and GeoSafe and basically is a cyrpto protocol to prevent ease dropping with the packets sent to and from the website. Where there is basically a handshake between the server and client on using a set key to pass critical information. With that said, if your certificate expires then you will have to go renew it, they do this to make sure you're still complying with protocols and such. Once you get the go ahead the provider will give you a set of easy instructions on how to install/fix the certificate, which all depend on the configuration of your server. In most cases with apache mod_ssl you will just make a yourdomainname.crt file and yourdomainname.key. Finally you will just include some text in your config.httpd

Code: Select all
SSLCertificateFile /usr/local/apache/conf/ssl.crt/yourdomainname.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/apache/conf/ssl.key/yourdomainname.key


Restart the server and you're good! Cheers.

-Sid
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