porttracker features

porttracker v2.2 Features

*NEW* Certificate Management

The porttracker appliance now includes certificate management facilities that allow you to import and manage OpenSSL certificates from both the management console and the porttracker GUI.

The porttracker appliance generates a self-signed certificate when it first starts. A self-signed certificate is signed by the subject of the certificate, and not by a CA (Certificate Authority). This is the default certificate. When your computer first connects to the porttracker appliance, the appliance sends this certificate to authenticate itself to your browser.

Because the default certificate is self-signed, your browser does not have a trusted CA certificate or a cached porttracker appliance server certificate (saved from an earlier connection) with which to validate the porttracker appliance certificate.

Also, the host name in the default certificate is www..com, which is unlikely to match the host name of your porttracker appliance. Consequently, messages appear warning that the certificate is not from a trusted certifying authority and that the host name on the certificate is either invalid or does not match the name of the site that sent the certificate.

When you receive such warnings, you may either accept the certificate just for the current session or save it to the certificate store of your browser.

To eliminate certificate warnings, you can replace the default self-signed certificate with a different certificate that has the host name of your porttracker appliance. The porttracker appliance supports X.509 certificates in .PEM format.