Using Self Signed Certificates

Due to Google is now more strict in the handling of SSL certificates in Android, they forced developers stop using insecure implementations for self-signed certificates. To accomplish this now you must generate a BouncyCastle Keystore (BKS) to use self-signed certificates with qBittorrent Controller.

This document explains how to generate the self-signed certificate, how to create a BKS file with that certificate, and how to use it in qBittorrent Controller.

Self-signed certificate generation

1. Generate a Private Key

openssl genrsa -des3 -out qbserver.key 1024

2. Generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request)

   openssl req -new -key qbserver.key -out qbserver.csr
   

   Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US
   State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]: FL
   Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:Miami
   Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]: None Ltd
   Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: Information Technology
   Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []: your.domain.com
   Email Address []: youremail@domain.com
   Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
    to be sent with your certificate request
   A challenge password []:
   An optional company name []:
   

3. Remove Passphrase from Key

   cp qbserver.key qbserver.key.org
   openssl rsa -in qbserver.key.org -out qbserver.key
   

4. Generating a Self-Signed Certificate

   openssl x509 -req -days 730 -in qbserver.csr -signkey qbserver.key -out qbserver.crt
   

Creating the BKS keystore using Portecle

Portecle is a user friendly GUI application for creating, managing and examining keystores and more. This is the easies way.

You can download Portecle from here, the follow these steps:

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Creating the BKS keystore using keytool

Download the latest Bouncy Castle Provider from here. This examples uses version jdk15on-154

wget https://www.bouncycastle.org/download/bcprov-jdk15on-154.jar

keytool -provider org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -providerpath ./bcprov-jdk15on-154.jar -importcert -v -trustcacerts -file qbserver.crt -alias your.domain.com -keystore qbc.bks -storetype BKS -storepass 'testtest'

Using the BKS keystore in qBittorrent Controller

1. In Settings configure your hostname

2. And then go to Advanced settings

3. In Advanced, enable the https

4. Then touch on Self-signed certificate keystore

   

5. Browse to the directory paths where the keystore was saved

6. Choose the keystore file:

   

7. Check you chose the correct keystore file

   

8. Set your keystore password (or leave it blank if it doesn't apply)

References

• How to create a self-signed SSL Certificate
• How to create a BKS (BouncyCastle) format Java Keystore that contains a client certificate chain