SSL Certificated Validity

Question

Hi, I'm using an SSL certificate from geotrust. I just ordered and installed it this weekend. However when I try to access my website using https, firefox (and the other browsers as well) the browser warns that the certificate expired a few days ago.

I guess there could be two reasons:

1. I made a mistake during the installation of the certificate
2. Geotrust did not sign the certificate properly.

First I want to rule out the second reason considering my browser tells me the certificate expired a few days ago. This does not make sense at all.

Is there a way to extract the expiration date from the certificate?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Sure.... check the certificate in the browser. Click on the not valid warning / broken SSL symbol in the address bar, it should give you an option to view the certificate ;)

Answer 2

TomTom's answer is right on!

Just about any browser will let you see the details of the certificate. There's always a Valid From field and a Valid To field describing the cert's validity period.

Also - check the subject DN and issuer DN. The Subject DN describes your server, the Issuer DN describes the signer. The issuer should be GeoTrust - if the issuer is not GeoTrust, you are not configured correctly, you are likely to be using the cert that came with the web server.