SSL and Certificates – Part 3 of 3

[Note: This is an update of a series of posts that were first written in October, 2009]

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series covered the basic cryptographic concepts behind SSL certificates, and looked at how an SSL certificate is constructed and how it is validated. This installment will discuss what different kinds of certificates exist, some things to watch out for, and two big takeaways that will save you time, money, and aggravation.

Traditionally, an SSL server certificate, such as the Wells Fargo Bank certificate that we discussed in Part 2, were issued for the Fully Qualified Domain Name (“FQDN”) of the server the certificate is intended to secure. The certificate we discussed was specifically issued to “www.wellsfargo.com.” This is called the “Common Name” (abbreviated as “CN”), and is specified in the “Subject” field of the certificate:

The Common Name Field

That means that if there were other DNS entries, such as “remote.wellsfargo.com” or “email.wellsfargo.com” that happened to resolve to the IP address of the same physical server, and you pointed your browser at one of those, you would get a certificate error – because the certificate was issued to “www.wellsfargo.com,” not to one of those other entries, and the browser won’t be happy unless the host name in the address bar exactly matches the Common Name listed in the Subject field.

To help deal with that, a couple of additional kinds of certificates were introduced. One is the Multiple Domain, or “UCC” (Unified Communications Certificate) certificate. [Note: Yes, I realize that saying “UCC certificate” is inherently redundant – like saying “PIN number.” If, by chance, my former English professor is reading this, I apologize. But I’m going to do it anyway.] A UCC certificate contains an extra field called the “Subject Alternative Names” field, which can be used to list multiple subdomains that the certificate can be used to secure. For example, a UCC certificate could be used to secure “remote.yourdomain.com,” “email.yourdomain.com,” “extranet.yourdomain.com,” and so forth, provided that all of those subdomains are explicitly listed in the Subject Alternative Names field. That means that you must specify what subdomains you want listed when you purchase the certificate, and if you want to add or delete one, the certificate must be regenerated by the issuer (which will generally cost you more money).

In addition to the Subject Alternative Names field, a UCC certificate still has a “Common Name” listed in the “Subject” field. However, according to the X.509 certificate standard, if the Subject Alternative Names field is present, the client browser is supposed to ignore the contents of the Common Name field (although not all of them do). Therefore, if the common name is “www.yourdomain.com,” but that common name is not repeated as one of the Subject Alternative Names, a browser that strictly adhered to the standard would end up with a certificate error if it tried to connect to “www.yourdomain.com.” This interaction between Common Name and Subject Alternative Names has some implications for mobile devices that we’ll come back to in a bit.

The other new kind of certificate is the “Wildcard” certificate. A Wildcard certificate could be issued for, say, “*.yourdomain.com,” and used to secure any and all first level subdomains. (E.g., email.yourdomain.com is a first level subdomain; email.seattle.yourdomain.com is not a first level subdomain, and could not be secured with a Wildcard certificate.) A Wildcard certificate does not contain a Subject Alternative Names field – instead, the Wildcard (“*.yourdomain.com”) is actually listed as the Common Name in the Subject field.

If you are running a browser that was released anytime in the last decade, it should support both Subject Alternative Names and Wildcard certificates. In that case, your browser will be happy if one of the following three conditions is true:

  1. The host name in the address bar of the browser exactly matches the Common Name of the certificate. (Unless the cert is a UCC cert, in which case the browser is supposed to ignore the Common Name.)
  2. The Common Name is a Wildcard, and the host name in the address bar matches the Wildcard.
  3. The cert is a UCC cert, and the host name in the address bar exactly matches one of the names listed in the Subject Alternative Names field.

However, if you are using a browser on a mobile device of some kind, it’s a different story. Windows Mobile 6.x and later devices support both Subject Alternative Names and Wildcards. The last few generations of Android and iOS devices should support them as well. But some older versions may not.

So what? Well, if you’re trying to use a mobile device to synchronize e-mail with an Exchange Server, it’s usually done by pointing the device at the same URL that you’re using for Outlook Web Access (“OWA”). If you’re using a Wildcard certificate to secure your OWA site, and your mobile device doesn’t support Wildcards, you’re out of luck – it’s simply not going to work. However, if you’re using a UCC certificate to secure your OWA site, and the URL of the OWA site is also the Common Name of that UCC certificate, your mobile device will be happy even if it doesn’t support UCC certificates…because it will simply look in the Common Name field and find a match.

So here’s big takeaway #1: If you’re going to use a UCC certificate to secure multiple URLs, and one of those URLs happens to be the URL you’re going to use to synch email to mobile devices, make sure that URL is the Common Name of the certificate in addition to being listed as one of the Subject Alternative Names.

Another common “gotcha” involving SSL and mobile devices involves intermediate certificates. Remember that “chain of trust” discussion from the second post in this series? Depending on who you purchase your certificates from, you may find that the certificate you have purchased to secure your Web site is not chained directly to the CA’s trusted root. Instead, there is at least one intermediate certificate in the chain between the trusted root and the certificate you purchased. This isn’t a problem for “big Windows,” because the browser is smart enough to sense that the certificate the server is presenting is not chained directly to the trusted root that it knows about, and to request the intermediate certificate(s) so it can validate the complete chain of trust. Some mobile devices, including older Windows Mobile devices, are not that smart.

Some mobile devices depend on the server to present the entire certificate chain, including any intermediate certificates, at the time of connection. And the server typically won’t do that unless all of the intermediate certificates are present in that server’s own local computer certificate store. Installing the certificates into IIS for use in securing the OWA Web site does not automatically put them in the local computer certificate store – you must explicitly import them.

But why purchase a commercial certificate at all? Can’t you be your own Certificate Authority if you’re running a Windows Active Directory Domain? Yes, you can…if you don’t care about supporting connections from any PCs other than ones that have been joined to the domain, and you don’t care about supporting mobile devices. Small Business Server was notorious for that – when you set up a Windows Small Business Server, the wizard that configured that server for OWA automatically secured it with a self-issued certificate. That’s not a problem for any PC or laptop that has been joined to your SBS domain, because the very act of joining a computer to a domain inserts the domain’s own self-issued root certificate into the computer’s trusted root certificates store. But if you then try to connect from your home PC, or your mother-in-law’s PC, or any other PC that isn’t a member of your domain, you get a certificate error. At least with a PC, you usually have the opportunity to override the error and connect to the Web site anyway…but a mobile device will simply fail to connect, while typically giving you very little information about what the problem is.

You may or may not be able to manually import a certificate into the trusted root certificate store of your mobile device. Some mobile operators give their subscribers that level of “management access” to their mobile devices and some don’t. Some mobile operators provide special certificate installation utilities for their smart phones, some don’t. Sometimes there are workarounds, sometimes there aren’t. To our knowledge, there is no definitive list available of which mobile devices have their certificate stores locked down and which don’t. So the question is: How much is your time worth? The first time you spend a half day trying to make a mobile device work with an SSL certificate that wasn’t built into the phone, you will have wasted more money – not to mention the time and aggravation – than it would have cost to go to a public CA and purchase a certificate that’s already supported.

So big takeaway #2 is: If you’re going to synch e-mail to mobile devices – and is there anyone these days who doesn’t? – do yourself a favor and decide in advance what mobile devices you’re going to support, then buy an SSL certificate from a public CA whose trusted root is already supported by those mobile devices. You’ll save money in the long run, and probably keep your blood pressure lower as well. Or just subscribe to Office 365 and be done with it!

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