Godaddy SSL certificate and PKIX path problem

This issue got me twice and I should've blogged it the first time for reference.

I installed a Godaddy certificate and everything looked fine on Firefox and IE. But when we tried to make a server-server connection via SSL, the requesting server rejected our SSL cert. Here's a part of the error message on the requesting server:

javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target
at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Alerts.getSSLException(Alerts.java:150)

This is what went wrong:

While following the instructions at http://help.godaddy.com/topic/742/article/4875 to install the Godaddy Cert, I originally picked the wrong file.

In section 10 of the first part, it says "Click Browse to locate the certificate file." The Browse button defaults to "*.cer, *.crt", so I chose the .crt file that Godaddy sent us. That was the wrong file, even though the certificate installed and most browsers seemed happy with it.

The correct file:

What the instructions should've said in Step 10 was to select the .p7b or gd_iis_intermediates.p7b file which is the actual intermediate certificate. So I went back and imported the .p7b file and the server-server connection was fine again.

p.s. I also deleted the incorrect record from the previous step. It's was created under Certificates/Intermediate Certificates/Certificates.

Malware on Windows 2003

One of our development server was infected by a few nasty trojan spyware a couple of weeks ago. The malware went totally unnoticed by ESET NOD32. After installing several spyware protection tools that couldn't fully remove the malware, we gave up on that server and rebuilt it. The trojans were actually detected by these programs (see the list below) and removed, but came right back. Since it was on a Windows Server 2003, most PC software couldn't be installed. The following are the ones that were successfully installed and did detect the malware:

- SpyBot Search & Destroy. This one did detect the malware and removed the infections, but couldn't remove the root cause, so the malware was right back.

- MalwareBytes. Same as Spybot, except it doesn't have a resident protection. So you can only run it.

- Spyware sweeper. This one was installed towards the end of the life of that server.

After fighting the trojans for days, the damage was too great to keep the server running. So now we're trying to figure out how to backup the data without getting the trojans backed up.

Ancient City with a Backdrop of the Heavens

Here's a beautiful picture of ancient ruins in Iran with a backdrop of the heavens. Found a smaller version of this beautiful picture at Wikipedia.org with a link to yazd.com where you can find a hi-res picture.

Credits: http://www.yazd.com/images/SaryazdStandingFacadeHR.jpg