SSL Certificates Exercise (Individual assignment)

Part 1: Read about SSL certficates

Please read the following article online http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/ssl-certificates-explained/

Nothing to submit for part 1.

Part 2: Create a self-signed SSL certficate

From the previuos reading, you must have understood that we typically purchase SSL certficates from a company. For a lot of development projects however, it is absolutely ok to create a self-signed certficate to secure your https communication.

For this part of the assignment, you simply must create a self-signed SSL certficate on your computer.

Document the steps with simple notes and screenshots and copy and paste them into a Word file or something similar.

Instructions for Windows can for instance be found here. For Mac OS you may want to start here. Please feel free to use any other resource.

Part 3: Use the SSL certficate in an Express backend

  1. Download the simple Express API backend example (not connected to a DB) from Module 3 in BB and save it to your computer.

  2. Modify the Express API Javascript code in a way that it uses the self-signed SSL certficate that you created in Part 2 to serve the API via https on port 443.

  3. Start the app and test the GET route in your browser.

Take some notes and make screenshots of your code changes, the terminal commands of the running app as well your browsers test and add it to the documentation file that you started for Part 2.

What to turn in

Submit your Word or PDF file with notes and screenshots into BB. There is no minimum pages but your document should not exceed 15 pages.

Grading and feedback

We will start grading this assignment 1 week after the initial assignment date. We will put a grade and feedback into Blackboard. Your grade will not be final until December 2nd, 2021. You can resubmit into BB and notifying the instructor that you would like your assignment submission to be re-graded.

Basic Grading rubric for this homework

Item

Points

Part 2

40

Part 3

60

Total

100