Intermediate SSL Certificates

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:20:03 GMT  <== Webmaster stuff ==> 

At the end of January, I installed an SSL certificate on this web site. I initially got a free certificate from cacert.org. That worked, but I had to tell my browsers to import their root certificate in order to stop security warnings. So I switched to a GoDaddy certificate, thinking that it would work. Same problem. Well, yesterday I installed a GoDaddy certificate at another site, and this time I read GoDaddy's instructions (may require an account). Turns out that they, and many other SSL vendors, don't sign their certificates with their root certificate authority (CA). They use an intermediate certificate, which establishes a chain of trust to the root CA. That intermediate certificate needs to be installed on the web server. Today, I asked the Site5 folks to install that intermediate certificate, and, voila, no more browser complaints. Unfortunately, my iPhone still complains. Guess it's missing the root of the chain, the "Go Daddy Secure Certification Authority", or Apple left out the intermediate certificate part of the validation process. Sigh...

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SSL Security Chain Fixed

Submitted by on Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:53:23 GMT

I got the site5.com folks to fix the intermediate certificate bundle installation, and now https to this site no longer warns, in Safari on my Mac or my iPhone. Yay!

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