FortiGate SSL VPN How To

I had bought a FortiGate 100A from the second hand market. It is quite difficult to set up SSL VPN feature by only reading the official documentation.

So, I documented all my experience and put it into a how to document. The document is called FortiGate SSL VPN How To and it is available on internet.

Reseting a Fortigate Appliance - Forget Password

I reset the password of the appliance - by the following steps

1. connecting the console port, 9600 8N1
2. reboot and login with user "maintainer" and password "bcpbFGTxxxxxxxx" where FGTxxxxxxxx is the serial number of the appliance
3. "execute factoryreset"

Now the control of the appliance is back to my hand! Of course, the settings and configurations are gone.

Sign PDF Files - In a cheap way

Adobe suggests CDS. However, it is too expensive for most of the people. Cheapest for using CDS is US$250 for 500 signatures with a token. Wow... too expensive for general public.

Using Acrobat (Standard/Professional) version 9 can easily done the task. The requirements are:

1. Having a digital certificate (I choosed VeriSign - US$19.95) from Windows Cert Store
2. Extract the Root Cert from Windows Cert Store (for my case, is Verisign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority)

Sign the PDF with the purchased certificate and ask the PDF file viewer to import the "Verisign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority" root certificate into Acrobat Reader. I think asking people to import a VeriSign root cert is not too difficult. (At lease it is easier to ask people to import your own CA cert.)

At this point, you get cheap signing PDF solution. But the signature will show "The time is based on the local time on the signer's computer." To avoid this, I also use Digital Time Stamping service from DigiStamp.

Details of how to setup DigiStamp with Acrobat (Reader/Professional) can be found here.