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[Closed] This Certificate is not from a trusted authority - how to stop this?

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A particular company has an IT policy saying we should avoid sites where we get security warnings such as :

There are problems with the security certificate for this site - This Certificate is not from a trusted authority

They also have an IT policy say we should use the Webmail server to access our email when out of the office.

Guess what message I get when I connect to the web mail page. Yep, security warning. What does the company need to do to get a trusted certificate?


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:00 pm
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Pay or self sign and distribute to all their clients.


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:02 pm
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Ah, Pay. That would be the problem


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:04 pm
 j_me
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Buy one from a trusted source.
Or set your own certificate as trusted.


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:05 pm
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This report pretty much sums things up, certainly reflects my experience of playing with SSL, digital certificates and the like:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/state_of_ssl_analysis/


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:10 pm
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What Brassneck said.

I can wax lyrical at length on this, but the abridged version is either:

you need to buy a server cert from a trusted source (eg, Verisign et al),

or, you need to self-certify and then copy the associated root cert to your client PC so that your issing certificate authority server is a trusted source of certificates.

The former will cost money, the latter will require an administrative overhead.


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:25 pm
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The other thing is,

The FQDN on the cert has to match the domain in the URL. So, for instance, if you connect to https://www.webmail.domain.com and the cert is for https://webmail.domain.com you'll get a cert error. You should be able to expand the error and find out what it's actually complaining about.


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:29 pm
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I've seen certs for .local domains far too many times.

Bloody SBS!!


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:30 pm
 cxi
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As a single name or SAN/UC cert?


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 12:44 pm
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Third option:

FREE self-cert 128 bit SSL from startcom

I've used these guys for 3-4 years to encrypt our frontend mailserver

Added bonus now is all major browsers recognise startcom CA by default

Worth a look imo


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 9:06 pm
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oddly enough I get these warning accessing govt websites from a government computer


 
Posted : 11/04/2011 9:09 pm