Topic: openssl compilation and encryption

[abeo]

Hi,

I have recently begun learning some php and mysql and I'd like to encrypt my php - mysql and http connection. Thus I need to generate a certificate using openssl as well as configuring my.ini, php.ini, httpd.conf and httpd-ssl.conf accordingly. (I reckon)

How can I compile openssl? (I'm using windowsxp) http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.0d.tar.gz

How can I tweak my server to allow encrypted connections(http and tcp(php-mysql)) ?

I would appreciate a thorough explanation.

[glsmith]

Compiling openssl is easy but do you need to? What you need to create certificates is in most Apache packages you can download, you just may have to create a directory and move openssl.cnf from Apache's /conf folder to the one you created.

Win32 or Win64?

In that 1.0.0d tarball you link to there are instructions in the files INSTALL.W32 & INSTALL.W64 depending on what you want.

These are build instructions for building Apache but the steps suggesting how to do openssl are there are well.

Win32: http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Win32VC9Build
Win64: http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Win64Compilation

Are you going to need a real certificate or will a self-signed one do? Self-signed will be noisy in all browsers. If you are going to get a real cert, the certificate authority you choose will tell you what you need to do.

If you just want to make self signed ones that's rather easy to do as well. At the command line this does me well.

> cd\folder\containing\openssl
> openssl req -new > server.csr
> openssl rsa -in privkey.pem -out server.key
> openssl x509 -in server.csr -out server.crt -req -signkey server.key -days 2048

Everything you need to know as far as Apache is in this forum somewhere so use the search. What's not here I'm sure Google could be quite friendly to provide.

Do you really want to encrypt talking to mysql? This part of your question is not my area so I cannot say you can or cannot do this. Encryption however is heavy on cpu and therefore slower, the bigger the key size the slower it is. If you encrypt on the front end and encrypt on the back end, you're slowing down on both side. If mysql is in house or on the server do you really need it anyway and take the added speed hit?