The Cryptography Journey — Self Signed Certificate

A self signed certificate is a digital identity document created and signed by its own developer rather than a trusted third party CA (Certificate Authority). While they use the same X.509 standard (as paid certificates), they lack the independent validation required to prove a website\server\device legitimacy. Because they cannot be revoked, never expire (making them resistant to security updates), and trigger browser “untrusted” warnings they are considered high-risk. Consequently, while useful for cost free encryption (https://medium.com/@boutnaru/the-cryptography-concept-journey-encryption-d382f8215364) in private testing or internal environments, they should never be used for public-facing applications (https://www.sectigo.com/blog/what-is-a-self-signed-certificate).

Overall, self signed certificates offer a cost effective and agile alternative to CA issued certificates, primarily by eliminating purchase fees and third party administrative delays. They are ideal for internal testing and private networks where the focus is on data encryption rather than public identity verification. Because they provide total autonomy over issuance, they allow for instant deployment and can actually enhance security for internal systems by removing reliance on external (https://www.cyberark.com/what-is/self-signed-certificates/).

Lastly, for trusting a self signed certificate (and bypass browser warnings for example) we can bridge the “Chain of Trust” by manually adding the certificate to your operating system’s “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” store. This is done by exporting the certificate by clicking the red lock/not secure icon in your browser, navigating to the details tab, and selecting “Copy to File”. Once saved, open the OS certificate manager (like “certmgr.msc” on Windows), right-click the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” folder, and import your file (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37460520/how-to-stop-security-warnings-in-google-chrome-for-self-signed-certificates) — as shown in the screenshot below (https://www.thewindowsclub.com/create-self-signed-ssl-certificates-in-windows-10).

See you in my next writeup ;-) You can follow me on twitter — @boutnaru (https://twitter.com/boutnaru). Also, you can read my other writeups on medium — https://medium.com/@boutnaru. You can find my free eBooks at https://TheLearningJourneyEbooks.com.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/create-self-signed-ssl-certificates-in-windows-10