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How to properly setup local certificate authorities for sub domains? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello everyone,

A bit of background on how things are configured: I have many local services and am in the process of setting up two local domains, namely local1.publick.com and local2.publick.com. I own the domain name publick.com and manage it through Cloudflare.

Local1 is for the Windows domain and is using Active Directory, while local2 is for the Linux domain and is using RHEL IDM.

Now, as I am also exploring Single Sign-On (SSO) with Keycloak and a few other things, I would like to properly set up SSL for all these subdomains. Can I configure two local certificate authorities? One for local1.public.com and another for local2.publick.com? I would then use these to create certificates for service.local1.publick.com and service.local2.publick.com. Since the AD domain controller and RHEL IDM controller are authoritative for these two domains, can I still integrate two CAs with this setup?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If you want a local CA for just a few low assurance certificates (say for a test stack), the CA.pl script in the openssl distro is simple and sort of usable. If you want to be more serious you sort of have to know what you are doing. If you just want people's browsers to accept your subdomains, use a wildcard certificate (*.whatever.com). LetsEncrypt issues those and Cloudflare also might.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

CA.pl script

NO. JUST NO. Fucks sake that thing is written in Perl. Instead use https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert OR https://github.com/smallstep/certificates

But yes, a wildcard is mostly way to go, less risks and more results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can also use certbot on the subdomain servers if they are on the Internet, to auto-renew individual subdomain certificates. To run a "real" CA you need a lot of opsec and infrastructure regardless of what software you use. For basic dev-level purposes, CA.pl works and has been around forever, though I'm sure there is better stuff out there.

Re perl, see also: https://xkcd.com/224/ :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You can also use certbot on the subdomain servers if they are on the Internet, to auto-renew individual subdomain certificates. To run a “real” CA you need a lot of opsec and infrastructure regardless of what software you use

Yes, I agree with you and I always tell everyone to stay away from creating a CA. - it's just not worth it the workload and the risks. Either way certbot can be even used without exposing local servers to the internet with DNS challenges and other means of authentication. The wildcard has the advantage of not having to publish those subdomains publicly in some for (DNS) or another (crt.sh).

For basic dev-level purposes, CA.pl works and has been around forever, though I’m sure there is better stuff out there.

https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert is the way to go for that.