Category Archives: Security

On the test I will install ACME client Certbot in Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial), which will help to get Free SSL certificates Let’s Encrypt for 90 days and automatically update them.
For other versions of Ubuntu, the Certbot client is installed similarly.

The first step is to add the Certbot repository and perform the installation:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache

Now run Certbot to get an SSL certificate:

sudo certbot --apache

To manually change the configuration of Apache2 and Certbot did not change it, you can run the following command:

sudo certbot --apache certonly

After running the command, you must select the site for which you want to request an SSL certificate.

After receiving the certificate, the following information was displayed:

IMPORTANT NOTES:
– Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
Your key file has been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
Your cert will expire on 2018-08-01. To obtain a new or tweaked
version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again
with the “certonly” option. To non-interactively renew *all* of
your certificates, run “certbot renew”
– Your account credentials have been saved in your Certbot
configuration directory at /etc/letsencrypt. You should make a
secure backup of this folder now. This configuration directory will
also contain certificates and private keys obtained by Certbot so
making regular backups of this folder is ideal.

A separate site configuration file for HTTPS was created, but in that lines that redirected from HTTP to HTTPS were added, the general similar changes as I described in this article – Installing and Configuring Let’s Encrypt SSL.

To update automatically, run the following command:

sudo certbot renew

You can also add a command to Cron for automatic updates, see my article – Using and configuring CRON

Example of adding to Cron (every Monday at 3:15):

sudo crontab -e
15 3 * * 1 certbot renew >> /var/log/certbot-renew.log

Or to /etc/crontab:

15 7 * * 1 root certbot renew >> /var/log/certbot-renew.log

For a test update, you can run a command (configuration and certificates will not be affected):

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

If the certificate expires and the update is run, nothing will happen.
To update certificates, apache2 should also work on port 80.

To update the version of Certbot itself, run the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install certbot

See also my article:
How to change email after registering Certbot (Let’s Encrypt)

On the test I will install Let’s Encrypt which allows you to install free SSL certificates for 90 days and automatically re-issue them.

Let’s say that Apache2 is installed on Ubuntu Server and there is one site for which we configured one configuration file /etc/apache2/sites-available/test.conf and turned it on:

sudo a2ensite test
sudo service apache2 restart

See the configuration example in my article – Installing and Configuring the Apache2 Web Server
The site works by HTTP on 80, now we start installation of Let’s Encrypt:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git
sudo git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt /opt/letsencrypt

Let’s move to the directory with Let’s Encrypt and ask for a certificate for the site:

cd /opt/letsencrypt
sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d example.com

You can also request for a www subdomain:

sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d example.com -d www.example.com

I replaced in the article the real name of the site on example.com. To receive a certificate, the site must be accessible by domain name from the Internet.
For resources within the network, with gray IP, you can not get a certificate.

After receiving the certificate, another configuration file /etc/apache2/sites-available/test-le-ssl.conf was created and activated with the following contents:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
     ServerName example.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/test/

     <Directory /var/www/test>
     Options -Indexes
     AllowOverride All
     Order allow,deny
     allow from all
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog /var/log/test.error.log
     CustomLog /var/log/test.access.log combined
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

Since during the receipt of the certificate I agreed to forward HTTP requests to HTTPS, at the end of my configuration file /etc/apache2/sites-available/test.conf the following was added:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

After the certificate expires, you can update it with the command:

sudo /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew

You can also add a command to Cron for automatic updates, see my article – Using and configuring CRON

Example of adding to Cron (every Monday at 3:15):

sudo crontab -e
15 3 * * 1 /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

If the certificate expires and the update command is executed, nothing happens:

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
——————————————————————————-
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/example.com.conf
——————————————————————————-
Cert not yet due for renewal
——————————————————————————-
The following certs are not due for renewal yet:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem expires on 2018-08-01 (skipped)
No renewals were attempted.
——————————————————————————-

See also:
Installing Certbot in Ubuntu