In this article I'm going to explain how to create keys, SSL certificates and key stores. This can be required to simply migrate your website to HTTPS or to enable single sign-on authentication or in other cases. SSL certificates can be used for digital signing/verification and for encryption/decryption. In case of digital signatures, the sender signs the message using a private key certificate, while the receiver verifies the signature of the message using the public key certificate. In case of encryption, the sender encrypts the message using the public key certificate, while the receiver decrypts the message using the private key. Generating keys. Generating certificates. Working with keystores. Generating keys The first step is generating a private/public key pair. This can be done in different ways. We'll use openssl utility as it will be used for certificates later as well. The important point is the key length - bigger length makes the key harder to crack. ...