Table of Contents

1. Challenge

   Generate signing request and key, and sign the Certificate

   1. First, we should elevate to root:

   sudo -i
   

   2. Now we should navigate somewhere to store these certificates. We could just use the default location, but I prefer keeping the certificates with the application they're protecting.

   cd /etc/httpd/conf/
   openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -out server.csr
   

   This will ask a lot of questions about where the certificate is being used. For a self-signed certificate in a temporary lab environment, just accept the default. In a production environment, you should fill all the information out.

   3. Now we sign the request:

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

   With that done, we need to set up Apache.

2. Challenge

   Configure Apache

   1. First, we should install the required module:

   yum install mod_ssl -y
   

   2. Edit the SSL configuration file to set the location of the SSLCertificateFile and SSLCertificateKeyFile:

   vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf
   

   3. Make sure we have an HTML file to serve:

   cd /var/www/html
   echo "This is SSL" > index.html
   

   4. Restart Apache:

   systemctl restart httpd
   

   5. Verify that everything is being served correctly:

   curl https://localhost
   curl https://localhost -k
   

   Remember, the error you receive on the first curl is because we're using a self-signed certificate. If that's the only error (verified by the second curl), then you've completed the steps correctly, and you're done!