December 7, 2023

How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04

Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority (CA) that facilitates obtaining and installing free TLS/SSL certificates, thereby enabling encrypted HTTPS on web servers. It simplifies the process by providing a software client, Certbot, that attempts to automate most (if not all) of the required steps. Currently, the entire process of obtaining and installing a certificate is fully automated on both Apache and Nginx. In this guide, we’ll use Certbot to obtain a free SSL certificate for Apache on Ubuntu 20.04, and make sure this certificate is set up to renew automatically. This tutorial uses a separate virtual host file instead of Apache’s default configuration file for setting up the website that will be secured by Let’s Encrypt. We recommend creating new Apache virtual host files for each domain hosted in a server, because it helps to avoid common mistakes and maintains the default configuration files as a fallback setup.

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How To Secure Nginx with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04

Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority (CA) that provides an easy way to obtain and install free TLS/SSL certificates, thereby enabling encrypted HTTPS on web servers. It simplifies the process by providing a software client, Certbot, that attempts to automate most (if not all) of the required steps. Currently, the entire process of obtaining and installing a certificate is fully automated on both Apache and Nginx. In this tutorial, you will use Certbot to obtain a free SSL certificate for Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04 and set up your certificate to renew automatically. This tutorial will use a separate Nginx server configuration file instead of the default file. We recommend creating new Nginx server block files for each domain because it helps to avoid common mistakes and maintains the default files as a fallback configuration.

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An Introduction to Let’s Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is an open and automated certificate authority that uses the ACME (Automatic Certificate Management Environment ) protocol to provide free TLS/SSL certificates to any compatible client. These certificates can be used to encrypt communication between your web server and your users. There are dozens of clients available, written in various programming languages, and many integrations with popular administrative tools, services, and servers. The most popular ACME client, Certbot, is now developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In addition to verifying domain ownership and fetching certificates, Certbot can automatically configure TLS/SSL on both Apache and Nginx web servers. This tutorial will briefly discuss certificate authorities and how Let’s Encrypt works, then review a few popular ACME clients.

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UFW Essentials: Common Firewall Rules and Commands

UFW (uncomplicated firewall) is a firewall configuration tool that runs on top of iptables, included by default within Ubuntu distributions. It provides a streamlined interface for configuring common firewall use cases via the command line. This cheat sheet-style guide provides a quick reference to common UFW use cases and commands, including examples of how to allow and block services by port, network interface, and source IP address.

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SSH Essentials: Working with SSH Servers, Clients, and Keys

SSH is a secure protocol used as the primary means of connecting to Linux servers remotely. It provides a text-based interface by spawning a remote shell. After connecting, all commands you type in your local terminal are sent to the remote server and executed there. In this cheat sheet-style guide, we will cover some common ways of connecting with SSH to achieve your objectives. This can be used as a quick reference when you need to know how to connect to or configure your server in different ways.

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How To Configure SSH Key-Based Authentication on a Linux Server

SSH, or secure shell, is an encrypted protocol used to administer and communicate with servers. When working with a Linux server you may often spend much of your time in a terminal session connected to your server through SSH. While there are a few different ways of logging into an SSH server, in this guide, we’ll focus on setting up SSH keys. SSH keys provide an extremely secure way of logging into your server. For this reason, this is the method we recommend for all users.

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How to Set Up SSH Keys on Ubuntu 20.04

SSH, or secure shell, is an encrypted protocol used to administer and communicate with servers. When working with an Ubuntu server, chances are you will spend most of your time in a terminal session connected to your server through SSH. In this guide, we’ll focus on setting up SSH keys for an Ubuntu 20.04 installation. SSH keys provide a secure way of logging into your server and are recommended for all users.

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