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You are here: Home » Install/Renew SSL Cert on Apache (2020 Cipher Suites)

By Abhishek Ghosh September 5, 2020 9:31 pm Updated on September 5, 2020

Install/Renew SSL Cert on Apache (2020 Cipher Suites)

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Those who are following us since many years know that we publish the updated server guides enough for a newbie to build and run a professional-grade quality. Renew and getting a new (paid) SSL certificate has little difference except – you may use the old CSR, Private Key and the intermediate certificate. Reusing the old CSR, Private Key and the intermediate certificate will not extremely weaken the security for a too ordinary website with financial no on-site transaction. In their case, the matter of renewing is a copy-pasting couple of files and editing the file names in virtual server config files and restarting the server. That is good for preventing the website from any downtime. However, we suggest using fresh CSR, Private Key and the intermediate certificate in all cases whenever you have some time in hand. If you are new with Apache and SSL cert installation, then How To Install Apache2 on Ubuntu With Let’s Encrypt, HTTP/2, HSTS is the best guide to start journey. It is practical to first test a website with Let’s Encrypt. According to our old guides, our settings file for SSL is located at :

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/etc/apache2/sites-available/
/etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf

In the /etc/apache2/sites-available/, run ls -al command to list the files. Take it granted that the main virtual server configuration file in our case is named 000-default-le-ssl.conf. The content of the file is this :

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SSLCryptoDevice dynamic
SSLStaplingCache shmcb:/etc/apache2/stapling_cache(256000)
SSLSessionCache shmcb:/etc/apache2/ssl_gcache_data_shmcb(1024000)
SSLSessionCacheTimeout  300
Mutex                   file:/etc/apache2/ ssl-cache
SSLRandomSeed startup builtin
SSLRandomSeed connect builtin
SSLPassPhraseDialog  builtin
 
           ServerName thecustomizewindows.com
           ProtocolsHonorOrder On
           Protocols h2 http/1.1
           # H2EarlyHints on
           ServerAdmin admin@thecustomizewindows.com
           DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 
           ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
           CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
 
SSLOpenSSLConfCmd DHParameters "/etc/ssl/private/dhparams_4096.pem"
 
SSLOCSPEnable on
SSLUseStapling on
SSLOCSPResponseMaxAge 900
SSLOCSPResponseTimeSkew 900
SSLStaplingReturnResponderErrors off
SSLStaplingErrorCacheTimeout 900
 
SSLOpenSSLConfCmd ECDHParameters secp384r1
SSLOpenSSLConfCmd Curves secp521r1:secp384r1
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"
Header always set X-Content-Type-Options nosniff
Header always set X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
Header edit Set-Cookie ^(.*)$ $1;HttpOnly;Secure
Header always set Public-Key-Pins 'pin-sha2="RmAfIcalkv6XmrFlvJ1rzpIcTC1Tk2uQPE1TlxPPPuo="; pin-sha256="SDG5orEv8iX6MNenIAxa8nQFNpROB/6+llsZdXHZNqs="; pin-sha256="i7WTqTvh0OioIruIfFR4kMPnBqrS2rdiVPl/s2uC/CY="; pin-sha256="snqzW9Bwdb/++vjcA36+kbP/qaVMmnB9ckuI3qAkihQ="; pin-sha256="BJKSF/6L2QXz4xK6MVj2RTiyPlFzQx3NcpuxnuqdABk="; max-age=30;'
Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
Header set Expect-CT "enforce; max-age=3600"
Header set Referrer-Policy "strict-origin-when-cross-origin"
FileETag None
 
# Header add Link "</wp-content/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/js/min/crayon.min.js>; rel=preload; as=script; x-http2-push-only"
## all other ssl config file path
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
## all other ssl config file path ends
 
    
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    
    
        Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    
 
ModPagespeedFetchHttps enable
ModPagespeedRespectXForwardedProto on
 
## begin third party cert
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/private/public2018.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/private.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/private/intermediate2018.crt
## end third party cert

The /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf contains these :

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---

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SSLEngine on
SSLProtocol             all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
SSLCipherSuite          ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
SSLHonorCipherOrder     on
SSLCompression          off
 
SSLOptions +StrictRequire
 
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\"" vhost_combined
LogFormat "%v %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" vhost_common

The above files show that we need to work only on the below snippet-block of the first config file :

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## begin third party cert
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/private/public2018.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/private.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/private/intermediate2018.crt
## end third party cert

All you have to do is to go to the /etc/ssl/private/ directory and do a ls :

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cd /etc/ssl/private
ls

You’ll get the list of your previous files :

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2018.csr              inter.pem       root.crt
dhparams_4096.pem     private.key     root-intermediate.crt
inter.crt             public2018.crt  root-intermediate.pem
intermediate2018.crt  root.pem        test-intermediate.pem
intermediate2019.crt  public2019.crt  ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
intermediate.crt      public.crt      

Obtaining certificate starts with generating CSR (Certificate Signing Request) file, which requires to create private key as initial step. For generation of password-less (non-encrypted key) type the following command :

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openssl genrsa -out private2020.key 2048

To generate a CSR, run the following command :

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openssl req -new -key private2020.key -out yourdomain2020.com.csr

It will ask you questions. Ultimately you’ll get a CSR file. Run cat on the file :

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cat yourdomain2020.com.csr

copy it and fill web form of CA to obtain SSL certificate. As for GeoTrust, you’ll receive emails with your domain’s certificate plus the intermediate certificate. Intermediate certificate’s file name will be of the CA. The companies supply other two certificates – one is root certificate and another is combination of root with intermediate. These two files are of no use for the web servers like Apache. Using them will show various errors on SSL testing tools.

Copy the content of certificate sent by GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Comodo to you via email, open text editor on SSH and paste the content. Save the file :

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nano public2020.crt
# paste and save

Copy the content of intermediate certificate pointed by GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Comodo to download via email, open text editor on SSH and paste the content. Save the file :

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## begin third party cert
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/private/public2020.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/private2020.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/private/intermediate2020.crt
## end third party cert

 

Now, test your thing!

 

Test with Digicert’s tool and SSLlabs’s tool :

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https://www.digicert.com/help/
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest

While the above websites are popular, there are more specific and strict tools to optimize your server :

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## checks compliance
https://www.immuniweb.com/ssl/
## test SSL handshake size
https://www.wormly.com/test_ssl
## robust tests
https://observatory.mozilla.org/
https://tls.imirhil.fr/

Install Renew SSL Cert on Apache 2020 Cipher Suites

 

Upgrade your Cipher Suite

 

In late 2018, most browsers deprecated TLS 1.0. TLS 1.1 was deprecated before starting of the pandemic. TLS 1.2 is currently the widely-used version of the SSL/TLS protocol while TLS 1.3 is already supported by many of the web browsers.

Mozilla recommends using the cipher suite with “intermediate” security for a general-purpose server, such the blog websites. This cipher suite supports TLS 1.2 and 1.3. You can generate your cipher-suite here :

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https://ssl-config.mozilla.org/

The cipher-suite we are using in September 2020 is :

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ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384

Tagged With conf apache cipher suite anssi , add new cipher secure crt

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Abhishek Ghosh

About Abhishek Ghosh

Abhishek Ghosh is a Businessman, Surgeon, Author and Blogger. You can keep touch with him on Twitter - @AbhishekCTRL.

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About This Article

Cite this article as: Abhishek Ghosh, "Install/Renew SSL Cert on Apache (2020 Cipher Suites)," in The Customize Windows, September 5, 2020, January 28, 2023, https://thecustomizewindows.com/2020/09/install-renew-ssl-cert-on-apache-2020-cipher-suites/.

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