Creating a Self Signed Certificate for IIS
Part 1 - Creating a Certificate Signing Request

Written by Tony Bhimani
April 19, 2004

Requirements
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft IIS 5.1
KeyMan - which is available for download at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/keyman

This tutorial describes the steps for creating a self signed SSL certificate for use with the Microsoft IIS web server. It is broken into three parts due to its length. It is geared towards Microsoft Windows XP and IIS 5.1. In part 1 we will cover the creation of a certificate request. This is the first step in creating our SSL secured site.

Create a certificate request using IIS manager. Open Internet Information Services from Administrative Tools in Control Panel. Expand the tree and right click on your web site and select properties.

When the web site properties dialog box appears, click on the Directory Security tab then click on the Server Certificate button.

The Web Server Certificate Wizard appears, click next.

Select the first option, Create a new certificate, then click next.

Select Prepare the request now, but send later option, then click next.

You can give the certificate any name you wish. It is probably best to give it the same name as your web site. Set the bit length to 1024 and do not check the bottom checkboxes, then click next.

Set the organization field to the name of your company or whatever you want. Set the organization unit to the department the certificate will belong to. You can put anything you want here since this is a self signed certificate. If it were a real certificate request, you would put your company name and unit. Click next.

The common name is the web site address the certificate will cover. This could be www.yourcompany.com or secure.yourcompany.com. You will need a valid DNS name if you plan on accessing your secure site through the Internet. In this case we are using localhost which means we will be accessing our site locally (yes, accessing it locally defeats the purpose of a secure site. Keep in mind this is just a tutorial). Enter your common name and click next.

Set the Country, State, and City fields to where your server is located, then click next.

Enter a file name for your certificate request. To keep things simple we will just place it in the root. Click next.

The IIS Certificate Wizard displays a summary of the values you entered. If you find any mistakes click the back button and correct the errors. When you are done click next.

Congratulations, you have just created a certificate request. Click finish.

We have just finished creating our certificate signing request.

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