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105 lines
4.2 KiB
HTML
105 lines
4.2 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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<html>
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<head>
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<meta name="generator" content=
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"HTML Tidy for Linux (vers 1st April 2002), see www.w3.org">
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<title>Shorewall Certificate Authority</title>
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<meta http-equiv="content-type" content=
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"text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
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<meta name="author" content="Tom Eastep">
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1 style="text-align: left;">Shorewall Certificate Authority
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(CA) Certificate</h1>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tom Eastep<br>
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<br>
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</span>Copyright © 2001-2003 Thomas M. Eastep<br>
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<br>
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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
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document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
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Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
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Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover,
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and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included
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in the section entitled “<a href=
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"http://shorewall.net/GnuCopyright.htm">GNU Free Documentation
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License</a>”.<br>
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<br>
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2003-12-31<br>
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<hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;">
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Given that I develop and support Shorewall without asking for
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any renumeration, I can hardly justify paying $200US+ a year to
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a Certificate Authority such as Thawte (A Division of VeriSign)
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for an X.509 certificate to prove that I am who I am. I have
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therefore established my own Certificate Authority (CA) and
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sign my own X.509 certificates. I use these certificates on my
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list server (<a href=
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"https://lists.shorewall.net">https://lists.shorewall.net</a>)
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which hosts parts of this web site.<br>
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<br>
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X.509 certificates are the basis for the Secure Socket Layer
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(SSL). As part of establishing an SSL session (URL
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https://...), your browser verifies the X.509 certificate
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supplied by the HTTPS server against the set of Certificate
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Authority Certificates that were shipped with your browser. It
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is expected that the server's certificate was issued by one of
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the authorities whose identities are known to your browser.
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<br>
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<br>
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This mechanism, while supposedly guaranteeing that when you
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connect to https://www.foo.bar you are REALLY connecting to
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www.foo.bar, means that the CAs literally have a license to
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print money -- they are selling a string of bits (an X.509
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certificate) for $200US+ per year!!!I <br>
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<br>
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I wish that I had decided to become a CA rather that designing
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and writing Shorewall.<br>
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<br>
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What does this mean to you? It means that the X.509 certificate
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that my server will present to your browser will not have been
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signed by one of the authorities known to your browser. If you
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try to connect to my server using SSL, your browser will frown
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and give you a dialog box asking if you want to accept the
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sleezy X.509 certificate being presented by my server. <br>
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<br>
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There are two things that you can do:<br>
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<ol>
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<li>You can accept the mail.shorewall.net certificate when
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your browser asks -- your acceptence of the certificate can
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be temporary (for that access only) or perminent.</li>
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<li>You can download and install <a href="ca.crt">my
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(self-signed) CA certificate.</a> This will make my
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Certificate Authority known to your browser so that it will
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accept any certificate signed by me.<br>
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</li>
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</ol>
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What are the risks?<br>
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<ol>
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<li>If you install my CA certificate then you assume that I
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am trustworthy and that Shorewall running on your firewall
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won't redirect HTTPS requests intented to go to your bank's
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server to one of my systems that will present your browser
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with a bogus certificate claiming that my server is that of
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your bank.</li>
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<li>If you only accept my server's certificate when prompted
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then the most that you have to loose is that when you connect
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to https://mail.shorewall.net, the server you are connecting
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to might not be mine.</li>
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</ol>
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I have my CA certificate loaded into all of my browsers but I
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certainly won't be offended if you decline to load it into
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yours... :-)<br>
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<br>
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<br>
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<br>
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<br>
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</body>
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</html>
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