Home / server / Questions / 216477
Accepted
JP19
Asked: 2010-12-28 09:53:48 +0800 CST

What Should be the Permissions of Apache SSL Directory, Certificate, and Key?

  • 772

I have my cert.pem and cert.key files in /etc/apache2/ssl folders.

What would be the most secure permissions and ownership of:

  1. /etc/apache2/ssl directory

  2. /etc/apache2/ssl/cert.pem file

  3. /etc/apache2/ssl/cert.key file

(Ensuring https:// access works of course :).

Thanks,

JP

apache-2.2 security permissions ssl file-permissions

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The directory permissions should be 700, the file permissions on all the files should be 600, and the directory and files should be owned by root.

    • 82

  2. The most important is to make sure the *.key files are only readable by root (SSL/TLS Strong Encryption: FAQ).

    My experience is that it could be realized also to other files of the certificates (like *.crt for example).

    So we should set the root as the only one owner of the directory and its files:

    $ chown -R root:root /etc/apache2/ssl

    And we can set the most restrictive permissions for this localization:

    $ chmod -R 000 /etc/apache2/ssl

    In some particular case, the localization can be different of course.

    • 0