How do I install the Acunetix Root Certificate on another computer?

Acunetix transfers all its data over TLS/SSL between the browser and the server. Therefore, Acunetix makes use of a certificate authority that is unique to each installation and generated during installation.

In order to access Acunetix from another computer, after setting it up using this guide, unless you choose to use an organization-wide certification authority, you will need to add the Acunetix root certificate to your operating system’s trusted root certificate store.

🔍 Certificate Store Tip

The following instructions will only affect programs that use the operating system certificate store. Some programs may use other certificate stores. If you use such programs, you’ll need to add this CA certificate to those other certificate stores, too. For example, if you are using Firefox, you will need to add the root certificate to Firefox’s certificate store.

Acunetix Root Certificate Location

Acunetix stores its uniquely generated root certificate in:

C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer

This is the Acunetix root certificate public key and should be copied over to the computer you would like to access Acunetix from.

Windows

Once you copied C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer from the Acunetix server to the client you want to access Acunetix from, simply double-click the certificate file. A dialog showing information about the certificate will popup.

Acunetix root certificate

Click on the "Install Certificate…" button. This will start the Certificate Import Wizard.

Certificate Import Wizard

Select the "Current User" radio button, and click Next.

trusted root certificate

Select the "Place all certificates in the following store" radio button, click the "Browse…" button and select "Trusted Root Certification Authorities store". Click the "Next" button.

Completing Certificate Import

The wizard will provide you with a summary of your actions; click the "Finish" button to import the certificate.

Windows (using PowerShell)

Once you copied C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer from the Acunetix server to the client you want to access Acunetix from, open a PowerShell console and enter the following command:

Import-Certificate -FilePath "C:\path\to\ca.cer" -CertStoreLocation "cert:\CurrentUser\Root" -Verbose

Windows will display a prompt asking you to confirm installation of the certificate. Click the "Yes" button to proceed.

security warning

Linux (Ubuntu, Debian)

🔍 Root Privileges required

Unless you are already logged in as root on the system, you will need a user with sudo privileges.

Once you copied C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer from the Acunetix server to the client you want to access Acunetix from, rename and move the certificate to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/acunetix-ca.crt, as follows:

sudo mv ca.cer /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/acunetix-ca.crt

Once the certificate is moved, you will need to run "update-ca-certificates" for the new certificate to take effect.

sudo update-ca-certificates

Linux (RHEL/CentOS 7)

🔍 Root Privileges required

Unless you are already logged in as root on the system, you will need a user with sudo privileges.

Once you copied C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer from the Acunetix server to the client you want to access Acunetix, install the ca-certificates package.

sudo yum install ca-certificates

Enable the dynamic CA configuration feature.

sudo update-ca-trust force-enable

Add it as a new file to /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/.

sudo cp ca.cer /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/acunetix-ca.crt

Update the CA trust.

sudo update-ca-trust extract

MacOS

🔍 Root Privileges required

You will need a user with sudo privileges.

Once you copied C:\ProgramData\Acunetix\certs\ca.cer from the Acunetix server to the client you want to access Acunetix from, you can use the security command in the Terminal to install the trusted root into your Mac’s System.keychain.

sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain ca.cer

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