Hi again! Recently I faced an issue with my Test-WebServerSSL function which is also available in my Powershell PKI module.

Issue

In certain cases, the function returns certificate chain errors, while Internet Explorer (as well as other web browsers) works normally and do not report anything wrong. For example, you can open https://www.nic.lv/ web site without any issues in your web browser. When you run Test-WebServerSSL function against this web site, you get the following:

Hello everyone! Last time I was busy on other stuff and haven’t enough time to continue the topic. Today I want to talk about SRP rule ordering and how rule conflicts are resolved.

When you define SRP rules, you may have 2 or more conflicting rules. For example, you have a rule that allows to run any software signed by a certain certificate. For some reasons you decided to block one or more specified applications that are signed by the allowed certificate. Or you have two path rules that points to the same file, but have opposite security levels. It is important to understand how SRP processes rules and decides resulting action (allowed or blocked).

Multiple policies

The first thing we should learn is how multiple policies are applied. As you already know (at least, I assume that you know, because you have to know this), in a domain environments you can define multiple policies at various levels. Normally, such policies are applied by following the following sequence: LSDOU (local, site, domain and GPO linked to an OU). The latest policy object applied becomes effective. However this is not true for SRP. When you look at RSOP (Resultant Set Of Policies) for other settings (for example, account lockout settings), you can see which policy wins:

Hello S-1-1-0 again, I'm back!

In the first part we discovered basic OCSP requests and responses. Today's stories:

• Nonce
• Service Locator

Nonce

By default, Online Responder may pre-cache OCSP response for particular certificate, especially if the certificate is used very frequently (for example, SSL certificate at login.live.com) until it (response) is expired. This reduces server load, because there is no need to sign the same response for each incoming request. And this behavior is recommended by RFC5019. Here is an example for StartSSL/StartCom SSL certificate:

Hello folks, PowerShell Crypto Guy is again on the board! Today I want to talk about a useful OCSP Client Tool which is available in my PowerShell PKI module.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

A time ago I started Online Responder deployment and was faced the problem that there are no good tools to test it's configuration and how it works. PKIView.msc and certutil.exe just can tell whether the OCSP is functional or not. No details about request and/or response details. After a little research I found pretty useful and nice tool called Ascertia OCSP Client Tool. Actually this is a great tool with a lot of powerful features, including raw ASN.1 traces and so on. I thought that it is worth to buy the tool and contacted their sellers. Holy ****, the price killed me. They asked about 1,800 (1.8k) euros for a single license! Even though the tool is very cool, I wasn't ready to spend such money for it. But, if you manage Lorne Greene or Johnny Cash, then Ascertia's product may be for you.

A little note about features in Windows Server 2012 AD CS. Only three major improvements are available:

• All Windows Server 2012 SKUs supports all AD CS features.

From version to version, Microsoft introduces new features in AD CS, however not all are available in all SKUs. For example, in Windows Server 2008 an Online Responder service was added, but was available on Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. The same thing as with Cross-forest certificate enrollment in Windows Server 2008 R2. Only Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs supported these features. From now, Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition will support *all* features in AD CS. This means that the following roles are available to any who has Windows Server 2012: