First, we installed the Apache mod_ssl module. This module adds TLS v1.2 support to our Apache server. The current version of the module also supports SSL v3 and all versions of TLS. When we installed the mod_ssl module, two new files were created in our EC2 instance: ssl.conf, which is the configuration file for mod_ssl, and make-dummy-cert, which is a helper script for generating a dummy certificate and a private key for testing purposes.

The certificate file that was generated contained both the certificate and the private key. Therefore, we commented out the Server Private Key file entry from the ssl.conf file. The certificate and the key are generated in PEM format, as required by the Apache server. If we are adding our own certificate and key, we need to make sure they are in PEM format.

Also, since we were using a self-signed certificate, we received a warning when we used the https prefix. In production, we should use a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA) so that this warning doesn't occur.