Hardware and Computer Knowledge Society

SSL is really neat. What sucks is that SSL certs cost monies and self-signed certs aren't respected by browsers. Enter Shawn and I concocting a master plan where we create a CA for HACKS. Now, this does NOT mean you get free SSL certificates that validate in browsers out of the box. What it means is, you have a CA cert you can import into your browser and THEN when you use a HACKS issued SSL cert, you won't get any "untrusted cert" alerts.

While I know this is pretty much non-news, I run some stuff under cover of SSL and I'm pretty stoked. I've attached the HACKS CA certificate to this post (strip the txt extension, Drupal is retarded). You download this file and then in your browser's preferences (not going into detail here, be clever) you import it as a trusted CA, bingo bango, valid certificates fall from the heavens, or whatever.

We have no "easy" way to request certificates right now, but if you drop a line to the listserv with the relevant details, Shawn or I either one can generate them. The final grand scheme is to create some sort of web interface where you enter the relevant details and it delivers you a certificate for download. This plan will, of course, never come to fruition, but I think we can all agree it would be the ideal way to do this.