Question

I've got a little private webserver where I have several virtualhosts. I know that it's impossible to assign a certificate to each individual virtualhost, because the server finds out which virtualhost was requested only AFTER the SSL connection has been established. But is it possible to have a single SSL certificate which lists several domains? Or at least a wildcard domain, like *.example.com. If yes, what Linux commands do I have to write to make such a self-signed certificate?

Added: To clarify - I have just one IP address for all the virtual hosts.

Answer 1

To expand on AlberT's answer:

http://blog.loftninjas.org/2008/11/11/configuring-ssl-requests-with-subjectaltname-with-openssl/

You don't have to use wildcard domains. You can just list all hostnames you need as subject alt names and it should work on all major browsers.

Answer 2

Create a certificate with domain.com as the CN and *.domain.com in the subjectAltName:dNSName names field - that works.

In openssl, add this to the extensions:

subjectAltName          = DNS:*.domain.com

Answer 3

First of all - you can assign a certificate for each individual virtual host - the key is to make different private (and external/public, if you want to make it world accessible) ip address for each virtualhost.

But then yes - alternatively, you can assign a wildcard certificate if your virtual hosts is simply *.example.com.

For the command - there are many results from google - i'll just put an example from here:

http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-signed-wildcard-ssl-certificate/

And make sure you enter *.example.com for the Common Name.

Answer 4

Hi, Is it also possible to have a self signed wildcard cert for any domain/hostname? Ive tried to use * as the common name but it did not work for me.

Thanks, Vikash.