Transition Network Security Information

The three Transition Network servers, wiki:PuffinServer, wiki:PenguinServer and wiki:ParrotServer all have a *.transitionnetwork.org SSL certificate from ​Gandi which is used by web servers and mail servers.

Getting a new certificate

See the steps followed in 2013 on ticket:475#comment:2 and 2014 on ticket:685#comment:2.

Checking the HTTPS certificates

There is ​a page for users on the main wiki, following is some more techie info.

You can check the servers using the ssllabs.com test here:

• ​puffin
• ​penguin
• ​parrot

See also ticket:409 on which some issues were resolved.

Check the SSL cert on the command line

The following is based on ​instructions from nixCraft, see also ticket:165.

Create directory to store certificate:

mkdir -p ~/.cert/www.transitionnetwork.org/
cd ~/.cert/www.transitionnetwork.org/

Retrieve the www.transitionnetwork.org certificate provided by the Transition Network web server:

openssl s_client -showcerts -connect www.transitionnetwork.org:443

Look at the end of the output, you will have one of these:

    Verify return code: 21 (unable to verify the first certificate)

    Verify return code: 19 (self signed certificate in certificate chain)

Note the error at the end, "Verify return code: 21 (unable to verify the first certificate)".

Copy from the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- to the -----END CERTIFICATE----- which starts with 0 s:/OU=Domain Control Validated/OU=Gandi Standard Wildcard SSL/CN=*.transitionnetwork.org, and save it in your ~/.cert/www.transitionnetwork.org/ directory as www.transitionnetwork.org.pem.

This certificate was issued by Gandi, so you need to get the various certificates ​from gandi.net and change them into pem format:

wget http://crt.gandi.net/GandiStandardSSLCA.crt
wget http://crt.usertrust.com/UTNAddTrustServer_CA.crt
wget http://crt.usertrust.com/AddTrustExternalCARoot.crt
openssl x509 -inform DER -in GandiStandardSSLCA.crt -out GandiStandardSSLCA.pem
openssl x509 -inform DER -in AddTrustExternalCARoot.crt -out AddTrustExternalCARoot.pem
openssl x509 -inform DER -in UTNAddTrustServer_CA.crt -out UTNAddTrustServer_CA.pem

Create symbolic links to files named by the hash values using c_rehash, enter:

c_rehash ~/.cert/www.transitionnetwork.org/

To confirm you have the correct and working certificates, enter:

openssl s_client -CApath ~/.cert/www.transitionnetwork.org/ -connect www.transitionnetwork.org:443

And you should now output like above but with this at the end:

    Verify return code: 0 (ok)