SSL Certificate

how to install


Certain areas of the Twisted Bits web site are secure; mostly those areas where you are required to enter a usercode and password. This is done so that the data being transmitted between your computer and the web site is encrypted. This prevents anyone from being able to use a "packet sniffer" to discover your password. However, there is a small annoyance in regards to this because any time you try to access a secure area of the web site, you will receive a notice from your web browser saying that the certificate being used is not one you have chosen to trust. The reason for this is that we have generated our own certificate instead of purchasing one from a company like Verisign, Thawe, etc. The reason we have done this is pretty simple - we simply cannot afford a commeercial certificate with our small user base. The self generated certificate is just as good, its just as secure, however because it was not issued by one of the recognized companies who issue these certificates, the browser will alert you to this fact.

When you receive the notice, you can always just proceed and still access the web site, its just that if you use secure portions of our web site a lot, to check your e-mail via the web for example, you will see that notice a lot, which can be annoying.

This document describes how to install Twisted Bits' SSL Certificate as a trusted root certificate so that you can avoid the "This certificate was issued by an authority you have not chosen to trust" errors whenever accessing any of the secure areas of the www.twistedbits.net web site. This page shows how to install the certificate using Internet Explorer 7. Other versions of Internet Explorer are fairly similar. The process for other browsers may be somewhat different. (The process for other browsers is usually easier, since most of them will recognize the certificate as such and prompt you as to wether or not you want to install it. You do want to install it - as a trusted root certification authority.)


The first step is to download the certificate, which is cacert.crt. When you click on cacert.crt, Internet Explorer will pop up the following window:


Click on Save.



Save the file to some location on your hard drive.


Next, in Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options, and click on the "Content" tab as shown below:


Then, click on the "Certificates" button.


The following window will pop up:


Click on the "Import" button.



Click "Next"



Click on "Browse"



Browse to the location where you saved the "cacert.cer" file, and open it.



Choose "Place all certificates in the following store", and then click on the "Browse" button.



Make sure the "Show physical stores" checkbox is not checked, choose the "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" folder, and click "OK".



Click "Finish".


If all went well, you should see the following window:



From this point on, you should no longer receive the SSL "You have not chosen to trust..." error for the Twisted Bits web site.
Last updated 01/26/2007 by Jon Steiger