SSL Explain + Examples [CertBot]
What is SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. This creates a secure channel between the client and the server and will encrypt all messages sent through this channel.
A real life scenario:
If you were to go to a shopping website such as ebay or amazon. You will first choose the item that you want to purchase, and then you will go to your basket and checkout. When you’re at the checkout page, you will enter your delivery address, and it will request your credit / debit card information. This is where SSL is of utmost importance. If you didn’t have SSL protection on these websites, this would mean that sites could pose as Amazon or Ebay and look very similar, to the point where you try and enter your credit card details and you’ll find out that they are scammers once all the money in your account goes missing. As well as authenticity, it prevents hackers from gaining access to your information half-way through the transaction of sending your information to the real amazon or ebay. If they manage to get into your session whilst you’re paying and capture the network packet that includes your banking information, provided the selling website has SSL protection, the hacker will get an encrypted text packet that they will not be able to decipher and so the information is rendered useless.
How SSL works:
A good example would be to take a look at my certificates page: http://man.certificates.matthew.software for a better understanding into certificates, however, from a high level overview. A company will ask to gain an SSL certificate and this will be signed by an organisation that your browser will trust. There are a few main organisations that will trust websites, and they will sign certificates with their private keys. These companies will also give some of their power to smaller companies which they trust to sign the certificates. So you can get a certificate signed by the main certificate authority or a smaller certificate authority that has been given access to sign certificates by the main CA.
How do I get SSL on my website?
The quick way to get SSL on your website would be through the use of LetsEncrypt! They. are a free organisation that will offer websites SSL certificates. First, you must have access to your shell on the server. This usually means that you’ll own the server, or pay or a dedicated machine. If you don’t own the machine, please ask the vendor of your hosting how you could get root access, or alternatively they may provide you an SSL certificate at a price. If you have access to the root shell, you can go to the following website: https://certbot.eff.org/ and enter in the specifications of your server and it will instantly tell you a step-by-step guide that is easy to follow on how to allow SSL on your server!
And it’s as easy as that!
If you would like to test out my SSL certificate, you can go to the following website:
Non-ssl: http://autotrader.matthew.software
SSL enabled: https://autotrader.matthew.software
If you click on the lock button on your browser beside the non-ssl certificate link, you’ll get something like the following:
Whereas if you click the lock button on the ssl enabled link, you’ll find the following:
If you click the certificate, you’ll see this:
This is the chain of trust of the certificate. So the root CA is know as Digital Signature Trust, and they have given permission to Let’s Encrypt to allow them to sign certificates on their behalf, and they have signed the certificate for my website.
