Re: Anyone Familiar with How Server Farms and SSL Certificates Work?

Hi Matt
I can verify what Brad is talking about
I was having the same problem and Brad kindly (offlist) helped me achieve
this
Since then, because Brad showed me what to do, I have had to do this a
couple of times - for the same site

Alan Shore
E-mail : ASHORE@xxxxxxxx
Phone [O] : (631) 200-5019
Phone [C] : (631) 880-8640
'If you're going through hell, keep going.'
Winston Churchill


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Bradley Stone
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 10:17 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Anyone Familiar with How Server Farms and SSL Certificates
Work?

Matt,

I am not importing certificates. I'm importing the Certificate
Authorities from the SSL certificate presented by the server my client
software (which runs on the IBM i) is connecting to.

This is needed for "trust" of the CA. Otherwise, no connection.

In this case, there were two certificates being presented randomly to
clients causing problems.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 9:08 AM, Matt Olson <Matt.Olson@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Why do you need to import the SSL certificate at all?

When I program against SSL services on the internet I've never had the
need to import anything.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley Stone [mailto:bvstone@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 8:56 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Anyone Familiar with How Server Farms and SSL
Certificates Work?

I noticed that the ones I couldn't get ended up being for 1 year
(2016-2017). Maybe with all the SSL changes going on for compliance,
they didn't want to use too long of a period.

Anyhow, here's the article. If you don't hear from me, please contact
Bill Gates. I think he's hobknobbing at Trump Towers. lol

https://goo.gl/3ZUeNz

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 7:36 AM, Kevin Bucknum
<Kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

The odd thing to me is that they seem to be using relatively short
term root and intermediate certificates. I can understand having
individual certs at 3 years or less, but they seem to be doing 2
years on their root and intermediate. They are the issuing
organization, and by only issuing certs to themselves from those
root chains, they can control who has them and when they have to be
updated, but it still seems like they are making more work for

themselves than they have to.

Kevin Bucknum
Senior Programmer Analyst
MEDDATA/MEDTRON
Tel: 985-893-2550

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Bradley Stone
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 7:07 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Anyone Familiar with How Server Farms and SSL
Certificates Work?

No answer from MS or any other support forums on how or why this is
happening, but I was able to put together a pretty neat little
system using DOS batch files, openssl and the IBM i to constantly
log into their servers with openSSL, saving the Cert retrieved over
and over every 5 seconds. I then compared the certs with one I
already had until I found one that was different and was able to
extract the other set of CAs. It took over 2000 hits for it to
finally find the

differnent cert.

But I got a few in a row after that.

I'm going to put an article together for it soon just because it was
such a headache. MS... I was always indifferent about them, never
having all these "problems" with Windows like its hip to talk about...
but this was their cloud services... if they can't help paying
customers, I will seriously never recommend their cloud services
over Google's.

Insert in pipe, and smoke. :) Time for a scotch.

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Bradley Stone <bvstone@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I am posting this hear so hopefully someone with some experience
can help me possibly understand what Microsoft's servers are doing.

So, randomly their email servers are presenting different SSL
certificates to clients when they connect. If the certificate
used is

one that we haven't imported the Certificate Authorities (CAs)
for, we

get an not trusted error on the IBM i.

Normally for this type of thing we simply use openSSL to grab the
CAs and import them using DCM. But because it's random, and the
server(s)

that are presenting this odd SSL cert we can't purposely connect
to, it's been a whole day of trying to get this rogue SSL
certificate (hopefully it is only one more!)

The same thing is happening with the RESTful API servers. I got
lucky

with openSSL on these and was able to get both certificates so
that at

least for those using the API are ok for now.

But the smtp server is another story. I haven't been lucky enough
to get the other certificate.

How and why would this be happening? When they install a new SSL
cert

does it get replicated to all the servers in the farm? Or is that
don't manually and it's possible a couple didn't get updated (at

all... or "yet")?

I've tried contacting MS but so far nothing from them. I just
want to

know if what I think is happening is in fact happening.

BTW, if you're on the fence between using Google or Outlook 365
for your corporate email in the future, after dealing with both
for a few years I would pick Google over MS every time. It's
faster and much

more stable.

(just a vent there... haha!)

Brad
www.bvstools.com

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