I have a Spring Boot java app that uses a self-signed certificate to communicate with the android front-end.
I use a tomcat server as my container for the app:
compile 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat'
Now, I have enabled https / ssl:
TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory tomcat = (TomcatEmbeddedServletContainerFactory) container;
tomcat.addConnectorCustomizers(connector -> {
connector.setPort(Integer.parseInt(serverPort));
connector.setSecure(true);
connector.setScheme("https");
I have to enable SSL as I want my android frontend to communicate to my server securely. I use the technique called certificate pinning which means I add the same self-signed certificate to both my server and my android app. For any http communications between the two, the communication will be encrypted with the keys of the same certificate and hence the server and android app will be able to understand one another.
When I load it into Heroku, I get errors each time I try to call the server:
2015-12-11T20:04:32.424629+00:00 heroku[router]: at=error code=H13 desc="Connection closed without response" method=GET path="/getfood?postid=566348364a918a12046ce96f" host=app.herokuapp.com request_id=bf975c13-69f3-45f5-9e04-ca6817b6c410 fwd="197.89.172.181" dyno=web.1 connect=0ms service=4ms status=503 bytes=0
According to this blog by Julie: http://juliekrueger.com/blog/
As a side note, Heroku apps are https enabled by default. The server I
was installing had Tomcat configured to use https, and trying to
access an endpoint was returning a code=H13 desc="Connection closed
without response" error. After I removed that configuration the error
went away.
I can fix the error by just removing the ssl / https from my tomcat server, but as I mentioned, I want to use the certificate pinning technique for secure communications.
I was thinking whether it was possible to disable the SSL on heroku side but keep my tomcat server SSL active but I already contacted Heroku and they told me that disabling the piggyback SSL that comes standard with their service is not possible.
I also looked at the paid alternative here called SSL Endpoint but it seems only userful for custom domains. Since all endpoints are coded within my android app and is not visible to the user, it makes no sense for me to use a custom domain. Furthermore, I don't think it will solve my problem as its sole objective seems to be to create the custom domain:
SSL Endpoint is only useful for custom domains. All default
appname.herokuapp.com domains are already SSL-enabled and can be
accessed by using https, for example, https://appname.herokuapp.com.
I googled for a few days now and cannot seem to come up with a solution. Disabling ssl on my tomcat side would not be acceptable in my mind as it poses too much risks. I would even consider other services (Azure etc) if this would solve my problem.
Any ideas on how I can solve this?
With Heroku, in order to use your own custom SSL, you need to use a custom domain and the SSL Endpoint addon, it will probably won't make sense for your case, but it is the only way to use your own certificate.
And I haven't tried all the providers out there, but with the ones I tried, the scenario is exactly the same, it is possible to use custom SSL cert only if you are using a custom domain.
Although, browsing google a bit, found this blog post where it ilustrates how to use an intermediate DNS service to comunicate with Heroku. In the communication between the DNS service and Heroku, the provided heroku SSL cert is used, but from the client to the DNS service a different certificate is used, so it might be of some help.
Update: A possible solution would be to use Amazon Web Services, where the deal is that you rent VM's and you are allowed to setup your own environment, meaning that you can install your own tomcat and use your own custom SSL.
Update 2: Also there is CloudFront with AWS, where you can use your own certificates explained here
Related
I have an Undertow container for a Spring Boot application (Java 11) which is started using https.
The application is communicating with a IOS (Swift) and Android phone. I noticed that after not using the phone for a while
( 1 minute), the first request takes more time because the SSL handshake is performed.
I am wondering if there would be an option to cache/ invalidate the https session so that the first request after a longer period of time does not do the hanshake again.
Based on Robert's comment I will elaborate an answer.
I used
-Djavax.net.debug=ssl:handshake:verbose
to help me track the ssl handshakes.
Then, after seeing logs in the console I found out the classes responsible for the implementation of the TLS. Using debug I found this property for undertow. I think that for Tomcat should be similar.
server.undertow.no-request-timeout which I set in my application.properties to -1
No changes were required on the clients (phones: IOS and Android).
I am having doubts about how to secure my microservices application with SSL.
A quik situation sketch :
I have a amazon ec2 instance with a loadbalancer in front.
On the ec2 instance I am running 5 microservices with a registry and a gateway application ( in a VPC ).
The loadbalancer uses a certificate from the Amazon certificate manager.
I also have a self signed certificate generated with the keytool.
Now the question I am having is :
Should I only configure the self signed certificate for my gateway application and register the self signed certificate with the loadbalancer as a trusted certificate or should I configure the self signed certificate for every microservice also ?
Regards,
You want to have microservices exposed to end user, and secured with https.
If you want security, please don't use self signed certificates. Let's Encrypt is much better option.
You can use API Gateway for that, it goes with https. It may be single endpoint for your all services - then directories can lead to different services. On the other hand, if all that goes on single machine, I would use single JVM... But that is different story.
Other option is more unclear. According to comments - not only for me. If your microservices are exposed to internet - you can terminate https on your load balancers. What I don't get is that >>my gateway application<<. It looks like there is something in between end user, and microservices... If that is true then https should be terminates somewhere there.
As a side note - I have no idea why you have load balancer in front of EC2 instance. Usually LB is used in front of auto scaling group to spread load among it's instances. If you want to automate that - Elastic Beanstalk is good option.
I want to restrict the direct download of a file on my site (let's say www.me.com/asd.txt)
but permit to my java applet in www.me.com/javaapplet.jar to be able to download it.
Is there a simple way for this?
I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the server is running Apache 2.2.24
Anticipated thanks for your help,
sboda
A secure way to do this is to require client certificate authentication for applets that want to download your file. Here's an example that uses the Apache HTTP Client.
You'll also need to create a self-signed client certificate that you provide to "valid" users through some other channel (like a web page with a required login), and you'll need to tell your HTTP server about the self-signed certificate. Here's a way to set up a self-signed client certificate if you are using Tomcat: Tomcat Server/Client Self-Signed SSL Certificate. Of course, other HTTP servers will have different procedures.
There are some issues using the browser certificates with the java plugin that will require your users do to some work exporting the browser certificates for use with the Java plugin. See http://download.java.net/jdk7/archive/b126/docs/technotes/guides/deployment/deployment-guide/upgrade-guide/article-16.html
Use a private key. The file can only be downloaded if the private key is passed along with the request.
I've got backend running on the tomcat server and client running in the browser. Application is built on Spring 3 MVC + Spring security framework. How to secure the communication ? Is there other option than just to set the server to be accessed only via HTTPS ? I've got no experience with this so it might be a stupid question, but will this affect my application and do I have to set something up in my app, when the server shall communicate with client via GET/POST request via https ?
It depends somewhat what you mean by "secure." If you want privacy, you must use TLS (SSL) as a transport.
If you're only concerned with authentication, then you have another option: Digest Authentication.
Digest Authentication allows the client (browser, usually) and the server to exchange authentication credentials in a secure manner without securing the entire communication. If you use Digest Authentication, then third parties can still:
See what data the client and server exchange
Insert themselves between the client and server and alter the exchange
What third parties cannot do is spoof the authentication or steal username/passwords in transit.
If that's not secure enough, you need TLS. You do not necessarily have to purchase a certificate. You can use OpenSSL to generate your own. This certificate will not automatically be trusted by browsers, however, so you can't really use it for public sites.
You will need to consult your server documentation for how to set up HTTPS or Digest Authentication, depending on which fits your needs.
Your application should not be affected by switching from HTTP to HTTPS, Tomcat handles this or maybe an Apache in front. It's important to understand, that HTTPS is a server-thing, not an application topic, because the client makes a connection to the server (Tomcat), not to your application. Check out the Tomcat documentation, it's pretty clear about how things work.
And, like the others said: From what you've said it's best to use HTTPS (TLS/SSL). Certificates are a bit frightning at the beginning, but it's worth to invest the time.
HTTPS is the (S)ecure form of HTTP, since you have an HTTP client server application I would certainly used HTTPS. All you need is to create an SSL certicate for your website and restrict access to your website to HTTPS only, then you are 99.99% secure.
Your certicate can be either commercial from Versign or equivalent or some open source engine.
for the clients nothing needs to be done to support HTTPS
I have a requirement to use client/server architecture and with Open SSL authentication.
Here, how server to know the connect client using their OPen SSL certificate?
Anyone knows the link, sample then please reply me.We have to develop it in Java.
OpenSSL is not Java, so your solution cannot be both - but I think I know what is intended.
Normally OpenSSL is used as part of Apache http as part of mod_ssl. This in turn uses a "connector" to send the requests to an application server, e.g. Apache Tomcat. You can configure this connector to also send the SSL certificates to tomcat if that is required, but normally the authentication/verification is handled within the deamon.
All this is pretty easy to Google, although you should factor in some time to fully understand the connectors. You've the keywords, now use them :)