Step 2 - An account admin for a CA provider creates credentials to be used by Key Vault to enroll, renew, and use TLS/SSL certificates via Key Vault. Step 3 - A Contoso admin, along with a Contoso employee (Key Vault user) who owns certificates, depending on the CA, can get a certificate from the admin or directly from the account with the CA. Public key is embedded in the SSL certificate and private key is stored on the server and kept secret. When a site visitor fills out a form with personal information and submits it to the server, the information gets encrypted with the public key to protect if from eavesdropping.
-->The Application Gateway v2 SKU introduces the use of Trusted Root Certificates to allow backend servers. This removes authentication certificates that were required in the v1 SKU. The root certificate is a Base-64 encoded X.509(.CER) format root certificate from the backend certificate server. It identifies the root certificate authority (CA) that issued the server certificate and the server certificate is then used for the TLS/SSL communication.
Application Gateway trusts your website's certificate by default if it's signed by a well-known CA (for example, GoDaddy or DigiCert). You don't need to explicitly upload the root certificate in that case. For more information, see Overview of TLS termination and end to end TLS with Application Gateway. However, if you have a dev/test environment and don't want to purchase a verified CA signed certificate, you can create your own custom CA and create a self-signed certificate with it.
Note
Self-signed certificates are not trusted by default and they can be difficult to maintain. Also, they may use outdated hash and cipher suites that may not be strong. For better security, purchase a certificate signed by a well-known certificate authority.
In this article, you will learn how to:
- Create your own custom Certificate Authority
- Create a self-signed certificate signed by your custom CA
- Upload a self-signed root certificate to an Application Gateway to authenticate the backend server
Prerequisites
OpenSSL on a computer running Windows or Linux
While there could be other tools available for certificate management, this tutorial uses OpenSSL. You can find OpenSSL bundled with many Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu.
A web server
For example, Apache, IIS, or NGINX to test the certificates.
An Application Gateway v2 SKU
If you don't have an existing application gateway, see Quickstart: Direct web traffic with Azure Application Gateway - Azure portal.
Create a root CA certificate
Create your root CA certificate using OpenSSL.
Create the root key
Sign in to your computer where OpenSSL is installed and run the following command. This creates a password protected key.
At the prompt, type a strong password. For example, at least nine characters, using upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols.
Create a Root Certificate and self-sign it
Use the following commands to generate the csr and the certificate.
The previous commands create the root certificate. You'll use this to sign your server certificate.
When prompted, type the password for the root key, and the organizational information for the custom CA such as Country, State, Org, OU, and the fully qualified domain name (this is the domain of the issuer).
Create a server certificate
Next, you'll create a server certificate using OpenSSL.
Create the certificate's key
Use the following command to generate the key for the server certificate.
Create the CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
The CSR is a public key that is given to a CA when requesting a certificate. The CA issues the certificate for this specific request.
Note
The CN (Common Name) for the server certificate must be different from the issuer's domain. For example, in this case, the CN for the issuer is www.contoso.com and the server certificate's CN is www.fabrikam.com.
Use the following command to generate the CSR:
When prompted, type the password for the root key, and the organizational information for the custom CA: Country, State, Org, OU, and the fully qualified domain name. This is the domain of the website and it should be different from the issuer.
Generate the certificate with the CSR and the key and sign it with the CA's root key
Use the following command to create the certificate:
Verify the newly created certificate
Use the following command to print the output of the CRT file and verify its content:
Verify the files in your directory, and ensure you have the following files:
- contoso.crt
- contoso.key
- fabrikam.crt
- fabrikam.key
Configure the certificate in your web server's TLS settings
In your web server, configure TLS using the fabrikam.crt and fabrikam.key files. If your web server can't take two files, you can combine them to a single .pem or .pfx file using OpenSSL commands.
IIS
For instructions on how to import certificate and upload them as server certificate on IIS, see HOW TO: Install Imported Certificates on a Web Server in Windows Server 2003.
Generate Ssl Key And Chain Tool
For TLS binding instructions, see How to Set Up SSL on IIS 7.
Apache
The following configuration is an example virtual host configured for SSL in Apache:
Create Ssl Key
NGINX
The following configuration is an example NGINX server block with TLS configuration:
Access the server to verify the configuration
Add the root certificate to your machine's trusted root store. When you access the website, ensure the entire certificate chain is seen in the browser.
Note
It's assumed that DNS has been configured to point the web server name (in this example, www.fabrikam.com) to your web server's IP address. If not, you can edit the hosts file to resolve the name.
Browse to your website, and click the lock icon on your browser's address box to verify the site and certificate information.
Verify the configuration with OpenSSL
Or, you can use OpenSSL to verify the certificate.
Upload the root certificate to Application Gateway's HTTP Settings
To upload the certificate in Application Gateway, you must export the .crt certificate into a .cer format Base-64 encoded. Since .crt already contains the public key in the base-64 encoded format, just rename the file extension from .crt to .cer.
Azure portal
To upload the trusted root certificate from the portal, select the HTTP Settings and choose the HTTPS protocol.
Azure PowerShell
Or, you can use Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell to upload the root certificate. The following code is an Azure PowerShell sample.
Note
The following sample adds a trusted root certificate to the application gateway, creates a new HTTP setting and adds a new rule, assuming the backend pool and the listener exist already.
Verify the application gateway backend health
- Click the Backend Health view of your application gateway to check if the probe is healthy.
- You should see that the Status is Healthy for the HTTPS probe.
Next steps
To learn more about SSLTLS in Application Gateway, see Overview of TLS termination and end to end TLS with Application Gateway.
-->The following scenarios outline several of the primary usages of Key Vault’s certificate management service including the additional steps required for creating your first certificate in your key vault.
The following are outlined:
- Creating your first Key Vault certificate
- Creating a certificate with a Certificate Authority that is partnered with Key Vault
- Creating a certificate with a Certificate Authority that is not partnered with Key Vault
- Import a certificate
Certificates are complex objects
Certificates are composed of three interrelated resources linked together as a Key Vault certificate; certificate metadata, a key, and a secret.
Creating your first Key Vault certificate
Before a certificate can be created in a Key Vault (KV), prerequisite steps 1 and 2 must be successfully accomplished and a key vault must exist for this user / organization.
Step 1 - Certificate Authority (CA) Providers
- On-boarding as the IT Admin, PKI Admin or anyone managing accounts with CAs, for a given company (ex. Contoso) is a prerequisite to using Key Vault certificates.
The following CAs are the current partnered providers with Key Vault:- DigiCert - Key Vault offers OV TLS/SSL certificates with DigiCert.
- GlobalSign - Key Vault offers OV TLS/SSL certificates with GlobalSign.
Step 2 - An account admin for a CA provider creates credentials to be used by Key Vault to enroll, renew, and use TLS/SSL certificates via Key Vault.
Step 3 - A Contoso admin, along with a Contoso employee (Key Vault user) who owns certificates, depending on the CA, can get a certificate from the admin or directly from the account with the CA.
- Begin an add credential operation to a key vault by setting a certificate issuer resource. A certificate issuer is an entity represented in Azure Key Vault (KV) as a CertificateIssuer resource. It is used to provide information about the source of a KV certificate; issuer name, provider, credentials, and other administrative details.
Ex. MyDigiCertIssuer
- Provider
- Credentials – CA account credentials. Each CA has its own specific data.
For more information on creating accounts with CA Providers, see the related post on the Key Vault blog.
Step 3.1 - Set up certificate contacts for notifications. This is the contact for the Key Vault user. Key Vault does not enforce this step.
Note - This process, through step 3.1, is a onetime operation.
Creating a certificate with a CA partnered with Key Vault
Step 4 - The following descriptions correspond to the green numbered steps in the preceding diagram.
(1) - In the diagram above, your application is creating a certificate which internally begins by creating a key in your key vault.
(2) - Key Vault sends an TLS/SSL Certificate Request to the CA.
(3) - Your application polls, in a loop and wait process, for your Key Vault for certificate completion. The certificate creation is complete when Key Vault receives the CA’s response with x509 certificate.
(4) - The CA responds to Key Vault's TLS/SSL Certificate Request with an X509 TLS/SSL Certificate.
(5) - Your new certificate creation completes with the merger of the X509 Certificate for the CA.
Key Vault user – creates a certificate by specifying a policy
Repeat as needed
Policy constraints
- X509 properties
- Key properties
- Provider reference - > ex. MyDigiCertIssure
- Renewal information - > ex. 90 days before expiry
A certificate creation process is usually an asynchronous process and involves polling your key vault for the state of the create certificate operation.
Get certificate operation- Status: completed, failed with error information or, canceled
- Because of the delay to create, a cancel operation can be initiated. The cancel may or may not be effective.
Import a certificate
Alternatively – a cert can be imported into Key Vault – PFX or PEM.
Import certificate – requires a PEM or PFX to be on disk and have a private key.
You must specify: vault name and certificate name (policy is optional)
PEM / PFX files contains attributes that KV can parse and use to populate the certificate policy. If a certificate policy is already specified, KV will try to match data from PFX / PEM file.
Once the import is final, subsequent operations will use the new policy (new versions).
If there are no further operations, the first thing the Key Vault does is send an expiration notice.
Also, the user can edit the policy, which is functional at the time of import but, contains defaults where no information was specified at import. Ex. no issuer info
Formats of Import we support
We support the following type of Import for PEM file format. A single PEM encoded certificate along with a PKCS#8 encoded, unencrypted key which has the following
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----------END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----------END PRIVATE KEY-----
On certificate merge we support 2 PEM based formats. You can either merge a single PKCS#8 encoded certificate or a base64 encoded P7B file.-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----------END CERTIFICATE-----
We currently don't support EC keys in PEM format.
Creating a certificate with a CA not partnered with Key Vault
This method allows working with other CAs than Key Vault's partnered providers, meaning your organization can work with a CA of its choice.
The following step descriptions correspond to the green lettered steps in the preceding diagram.
(1) - In the diagram above, your application is creating a certificate, which internally begins by creating a key in your key vault.
How generate ssh key pair ubuntu windows 7. The ssh-keygen command creates a 2048-bit RSA key pair.For extra security, use RSA4096: ssh –keygen –t rsa 4096If you’ve already generated a key pair, this will prompt to overwrite them, and those old keys will not work anymore.The system will ask you to create a passphrase as an added layer of security.
(2) - Key Vault returns to your application a Certificate Signing Request (CSR).
(3) - Your application passes the CSR to your chosen CA.
(4) - Your chosen CA responds with an X509 Certificate.
(5) - Your application completes the new certificate creation with a merger of the X509 Certificate from your CA.