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When the vendors HowTo's are not rebuilding the reality or "Install a subordinate certificate authority (CA) for HTTPS inspection" is wrong

K-M

Just for someone else with the same problem, I had a ticket with Sophos (for months just to get this answer...) because I didn't get this one working: https://docs.sophos.com/nsg/sophos-firewall/19.0/Help/en-us/webhelp/onlinehelp/AdministratorHelp/Certificates/HowToArticles/CertificatesInstallSubordinateCAForHTTPSInspection/index.html#generate-a-certificate-signing-request-csr. Problem began for us in 18.5 but it is the same in 19.0 (don't know if this one worked ever...).

I was told that this is not possible. After I asked again that they want to tell me that the HowTo from themselves is wrong it was confirmed. So if someone want's to do this you have to do it another way against what the help will tell you...

To have some additional benefit from this topic: I can recommend the DigiCertutil for that purpose: https://www.digicert.com/support/tools/certificate-utility-for-windows

But as a last word here: for me it is ridiculous to wait for months for a useful answer and then the answer is simply "Yes, that's right it is not possible you can use the certificate used by CSR of Sophos Firewall for web services like UI access, WAF, etc...but not for proxy or email..etc." instead of: Yeah you are right, we are fixing it like described in the HowTo. At least it would be of sense to delete the wrong entry in the help asap...



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  • 0

    Is still the same, article still is in database but doesn't match the reality...

  • 0 in reply to K-M

    Hi ,

    Thank you for bringing this up. I have reached out to our Documentation Team and this request has been added to the queue. I will let you know once there are updates. 

    Karlos
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Technical Support
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  | Sign up for SMS Alerts
    If a post solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.
  • +1 in reply to K-M

    I just tried this and it worked fine. When I uploaded the completed certificate file after signing the CSR with AD CS, the other two options lit up and I could select "Certificate authority only" or "Certificate and certificate authority".

    Are you 100% certain that you selected "Subordinate Certificate Authority" in step 4? The upload function does check to ensure that the certificate you are uploading has the necessary properties for a CA.

  • 0 in reply to RichBaldry

    Funny, then you are the only person in this thread where this worked in detail/real life. Had a support ticket and nobody could solve it, even it is verified that Sophos will delete it from Documentation, see below. I would be interested in your exact steps how you did it. Maybe we could connect for a session, that you could show it to me how you do it.

    Are you using a standalone CA for signing in a two tier pki? Then you also have to use the comand line on the offline CA? Or are you signing via GUI on the production/issuing CA?

  • +1 in reply to K-M

    Hi K-M - I made a quick video showing the steps I was taking. Perhaps you could have a look and see how it matches your experience. First, I just show that I already have the domain's root CA installed, then I go through the process of creating a CSR on the Firewall, signing it as a Certification Authority in AD then re-importing it to the Firewall. 

  • 0 in reply to RichBaldry

    Great, that is something we can work on. Don't know why the support was not able to add this useful information with OpenSSL as you are aware of it. Would have been easy to see that it can't be working without even trying to import it as my flag is FALSE!

    BUT: it is only FALSE if the CSR comes from the Sophos itself. CSR generated externally are working just fine. Just did a parallel test with CSR from Sophos and from DigiCert utility. CSR from Sophos is FALSE, from DigiCert it is TRUE. So the template is right but there seems to be a problem in Windows CA while working with the Sophos CSR this way.

    So we have the following differences:

    - I am using a (offline) Standalone CA for issuing all SubCA certificates (two tier pki)

    - In Windows Standalone CAs there are NO certificate templates in GUI available (there are no Templates configurable in MMC, too)

    - SubCA Certificates CSRs are submitted like this: certreq -submit -attrib "CertificateTemplate:SubCA" "filename"

    I send you a link to my test with screenshots. As there are internal information in it I can't link it here. There you can see in steps what I did.

  • +1 in reply to RichBaldry

    OK, helped me searching the right way and I found it (that would have saved me hours with the support!). The problem is really the CSR from Sophos as it requests to be a single certificate for a device. Sorry, have only the german output from "certutil -dump csr".

    Only the attributes are important, so I only will post this one here.

    DigiCert csr (really short without any special):

    Anforderungsattribute: 1
      1 Attribute:

      Attribut[0]: 1.2.840.113549.1.9.14 (Zertifikaterweiterungen)
        Wert [0][0], Länge = 23
    Zertifikaterweiterungen: 1
        2.5.29.17: Kennzeichen = 0, Länge = 18
        Alternativer Antragstellername
            DNS-Name=test-digi.test.local

    Signaturalgorithmus:
        Algorithmus Objekt-ID: 1.2.840.113549.1.1.5 sha1RSA
        Algorithmusparameter:
        05 00

    Sophos CSR:

    Anforderungsattribute: 3
      3 Attribute:

      Attribut[0]: 1.2.840.113549.1.9.7 (Kennwort in Frage stellen)
        Wert [0][0], Länge = 19
        hHbLw2z9ENjdTdKbT9hRk5N

      Attribut[1]: 1.2.840.113549.1.9.2 (Unstrukturierter Name)
        Wert [1][0], Länge = 1a
    [...]   


      Attribut[2]: 1.2.840.113549.1.9.14 (Zertifikaterweiterungen)
        Wert [2][0], Länge = 36
    Zertifikaterweiterungen: 3
        2.5.29.17: Kennzeichen = 0, Länge = 13
        Alternativer Antragstellername
            DNS-Name=test.test.local

        2.5.29.19: Kennzeichen = 0, Länge = 2
        Basiseinschränkungen
            Typ des Antragstellers=Endeinheit
            Einschränkung der Pfadlänge=Keine

        2.5.29.15: Kennzeichen = 0, Länge = 4
        Schlüsselverwendung
            Digitale Signatur, Zugelassen, Schlüsselverschlüsselung (e0)

    Signaturalgorithmus:
        Algorithmus Objekt-ID: 1.2.840.113549.1.1.11 sha256RSA
        Algorithmusparameter:
        05 00

    That has to be the same on your side. So it shouldn't be working at your side, too. BUT... now there is a Microsoft thing:

    Important difference between Standalone and Enterprise CA is that if you use a Enterprise CA every attribute from the certificate template overwrites the attribute in the CSR, even if it is set. In a standalone CA the attribute will be kept if it is existing in the CSR despite what is beeing configured in the used template. So that is why it is working via the GUI on your Enterprise CA but not on my Standalone CA.

    Additional Excurse: somewhere else stands that SubCA certificates should also be marked as critical (https://krestfield.github.io/docs/certdog/issuing-subca-from-microsoftca.html) and this is confirmed here (sorry german, https://www.gradenegger.eu/?p=1455) but that doesn't have an impact if it is already working. Maybe Sophos should take that in consideration if someone "fixes" the CSR generator and if you tick a button that this CSR is for SubCA it will be automatically requested as critical...

  • 0 in reply to Karlos

    It seems that we are close to a solution and maybe to an addition to the documentation if the problem is now fixed afterwards...

  • 0 in reply to K-M

    So if someone is looking into here please tell us if we have to open another case for it or if you discuss it internally on your own. Thanks in advance.

  • 0 in reply to K-M

    Thanks for sharing and providing the above information. I will go ahead and pass this on to our Documentation team.

    Best,

    Karlos
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Technical Support
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  | Sign up for SMS Alerts
    If a post solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.
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