Self-signed SSL certificates for private servers

Self-signed SSL certificates aren't substitutes for commercial certificates for your publicly available servers, but they will prevent intruders from eavesdropping on or breaking into your services while you're using your service's configuration management application.

OpenSSL comes installed in almost all Linux and BSD operating systems, except for source-based operating systems. Here's a template for making your own certificates:

1. Generate a RSA private key of 1024 bits encrypted using triple DES:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

2. Generate a new certificate signing request (CSR) using your RSA private key:

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

Country Name (2 letter code) [default country code]: <country code>

State or Province Name (full name) [default state]: <state>

Locality Name (e.g. city) [default city]: <city>

Organization Name (e.g. company) [default company name]: <company name>

Organization Unit Name (e.g. section) [default department]: <department>

Common Name (e.g. your name) []: <hostname or domain name or fqdn>

Email Address []: <webmaster email address>

3. Generate a self-signed certificate that expires in 365 days:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out
              server.crt

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