We are running an Apache web server on a single AWS Amazon Linux EC2 instance and we want to configure HTTPS on the web server. Either we configure an application load balancer on AWS and configure HTTPS on the ELB, or we purchase an SSL/TLS certificate from GoDaddy and configure it in the web server.
Which option is best for us in terms of long-term costs?
The cost of the Go Daddy SSL ultimately comes down to the configuration such as duration of certificate and whether its single domain, multi domain or using wildcard. You also have the option for a free SSL using certbot if cost is a factor.
Application Load Balancer is not the only service that can use ACM, you can also use a CloudFront distribution in front of a server (or load balancer) and attach your ACM certificate to it.
By using ACM you will no longer have to worry about rotation of the SSL, the renewal when close to expiry or copying it to new resources that you create.
If this is a small personal project I would suggest to go with a free certbot SSL, if its professional or a project you see expanding with additional resources I would suggest using ACM as it will make SSL management across resources easier to maintain.
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I have created a nodejs app and hosted it on aws ec2.
Enabled HTTPS, HTTP in the security. I purchased a domain from an external domain provider and connected nameservers using route53.
Now, when I am opening the domain it showing not secure. How Can I make it secure. I tried listen port in 443 but then domain was not opening.
Can Someone please help how to make it secure or provide some good documentation for begineers.
If you don't want use a load balancer to front your instance, then you have to get and install a third party SSL certificate on your instance for your domain.
A popular choice are certificates from https://letsencrypt.org/ (StackOverflow uses them as well). They also provide https://certbot.eff.org/ tool for easy installation and setup of the SSL certs on a variety of operating systems and servers.
I have a VueJS front-end application running on S3 being served as a static website.
I have a NodeJS (behind an nginx reverse proxy, plus a few other services) backend application running on an EC2 instance that the VueJS app talks to (over http currently).
I have a domain successfully pointed at the VueJS app (S3 bucket) with the configured SSL certificates using Route53 / CloudFront / ACM.
However, now the VueJS app will not communicate with the EC2 instance backend as it is still using HTTP which is now not allowed.
So what is the best way to configure this? I can't run certbot on the ec2 instance and generate an SSL certificate for my domain as there are certificates already being used for the S3 bucket.
Should I just create a self-signed certificate?
Can I create another certificate for a subdomain perhaps (api.example.com say) and set up DNS record for that to point to my EC2 instance IP address?
How is this usually done, what is best practice?
So a self-sign cert wont work, it wont pass validation as there is no known CA behind it ( Certificate authority) I mean you can install it but the browser is going to complain..
Im not sure I understand why you cant use certbot.. s3 / ec2 are two seperate services so I'm a bit confused here?
You can use letencrypt to generate a cert for the server and have it installed as well but if you have clusters you may be better served by installing it on the actual ALB, however this does not ensure end-to-end if the cert is not installed on all backend systems, (that would require installing the cert on all systems in the cluster) You requirements will dictate this really.
If you are unable to generate a cert with letsencrypt you can get an SSL from ssls.com and just installed the PEM or CRT on the server / load balancer too though.
Usually you create some subdomain like you said for your api and create a certificate for that subdomain. On AWS in particular, you can use an elastic load balancer and use ACM /Route53 with that for ease of certificate management, but that does carry costs of the load balancer.
Alternative is to just put an API gateway in front of your EC2 instance as a reverse proxy, which will carry some costs, but maybe not as much depending on traffic volume.
I am new on terms of every aspect of SSL certificate.
I have a architecture, where Route53 routes traffic to Load balance.
We are moving to production and we have to implement SSL certification to handle https traffic.
Where should i position the certificate in the architecture?
While searching i sow AWS Certificate Manager.
I am wondering how is it different ?
And when i buy a certificate can i use a single certificate with different account?
(Example: can i have same certificate set up for Staging and multiple production environment)
You can use the ACM to generate certifications for you.
It's totally free, if it's a public certificate, and will automatically renew when it expires.
But some security teams will require you to upload a more advanced certificate than ACM generates for you, in this case, you can buy the certificate and upload it in the ACM service. Keep in mind that it won't renew automatically and when it expires you will have to upload a new certificate.
Where should I position the certificate in the architecture?
It depends on your security requirements, but it's totally fine to create an HTTPS commutation between Client and Load Balancer, and an HTTP communication between Load Balancer and Server. In this case, you will only need a public certificate generated by ACM.
If your security requirements need to create a secure communication end-to-end (e.g. HTTPS communication between LoadBalancer and Server), you will need to install the same private certificate in all servers and upload your private certificate in ACM.
While searching I sow AWS Certificate Manager. I am wondering how is it different ?
The only difference is that you don't need no buy a certificate if you only use in Load Balancers / API Gateway, etc but if you want to download the certificate to install in your on-premise Load Balancer or in the servers, you will have to pay $400 for each certificate.
And when I buy a certificate can I use a single certificate with a different account? (Example: can I have the same certificate set up for Staging and multiple production environments)
Yes, you can. But keep in mind that you will need to create a wildcard certificate to support multiple DNS names.
The preferred service to use is AWS ACM.
You can either upload your own certificate (i.e. purchase it then upload) or have AWS generate and manage it for you.
If you let ACM manage and generate it will regenerate ahead of its expiry and handle the rotation on each attached resource.
It is important to note that an ACM certificate can only be bound to the following resources for HTTP traffic:
ELB
CloudFront
API Gateway
Once it is connected to these you can use SSL offloading (the TLS connection is terminated at the resource rather than the instance) to connecting to the backend resources over plain HTTP.
You should be aware that if you want to serve traffic directly from an EC2 you will not be able to use ACM public CA and instead would limited to one of the following:
Buy certificate and deploy to all servers
Use a service like certbot on each server
In addition you can use certificates that are hosted in IAM but this is considered legacy with less features than ACM.
my team is creating an app that involves sharing bank details. For a feature that involves instant verification of bank accounts, we have used a third party vendor, Dwolla, who provide a secure interface for entering the bank account details.
This is from Dwolla:
https://developers.dwolla.com/resources/dwolla-js/instant-account-verification.html
Our app is hosted on AWS Server, EC2 instance on iis, S3 storage.
First, do I need to install SSL on AWS server?
If yes, how should I do it?
I have been looking for answers everywhere, but I can't find an exact resolution.
Please help.
To install the SSL certificate, it will depends on some specifics of your environment:
If you use a single instance with IIS you must adquire a SSL certificate from a external CA. It will cost you some money and they will guide you how to request and emit the certificate. With the certificate emitted you'll need to upload it to your os and configure the IIS to use it;
If you use a pool of instances behind a load balancer provided by AWS you can request a certificate from AWS for free and configure the load balancer to use the emitted certificate (https://aws.amazon.com/certificate-manager/?nc1=h_ls).
If you do not use a AWS load balancer, you can create a AWS CloudFront Distribution (https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/), use your IIS as origin and configure your free AWS Certificate in the distribution.
We started using PKISharp win-acme to get free LetsEncrypt SSL certificates for our IIS in EC2 and it works like a charm, auto-renew every 2-3 months without issue, very easy to setup from "dos" prompt (run as administrator)...
To help pkisharp do its job, keep your 80 and 443 binding on the same site, you can configure a "url rewrite" rule to redirect all 80 requests to 443.
The tool will add a task in the windows scheduler to handle the auto-renew.
We've been using certify (https://certifytheweb.com) with no issues on IIS. Free for less than 3 domains, cheap for up to 100 domains. Use this on all our servers. Turnkey solution with great debugging tools.
I am not into SSL at all, so bear with me please. I have no idea how to start to actually solve my problem.
Current situation:
1x Webserver with Webspace for a Website and it includes a Domain Administration, also to order SSL Certificates etc.
1x Different Webserver at Amazon Web Services with a PHP-based Software on it with Login etc.
A Subdomain that I created in the Domain Administration is pointing via DNS to the IP of the AWS.
What I need:
I want an https Connection (SSL) for the Subdomain that is pointing to the AWS so that the connection/login is secure.
My question is what I have to do on the side where I have the Domain Administration and after that what I have to do on the side of the AWS.
Thank you so much!
You have several options in hand,
If you already have a SSL certificate purchased, you can include it inside the webserver (e.g; configure apache for SSL).
If you plan to use free SSL certificates from Amazon, you can use one of the following options after creating a SSL certificate in AWS Certificate Manager.
Create a AWS CloudFront Distribution and attach the SSL certificate there while configuring an origin to forward traffic to the specific web server. However, you need to create the SSL certificate in North Virginia region and there won't be any upfront costs for CloudFront). CloudFront acts as a proxy and you can explicitly instruct to cache the static content reducing the load for web server and improving the performance.
The other option is to create a Application Load Balancer (ALB) and attach the SSL certificate there ( Create the SSL certificate in the same region) while forwarding traffic to the web server. However, this will add a monthly reoccurring costs for the ALB.
All you need to do is, on AWS ACM (AWS Certificate Manager) procure a certificate for your subdomain and use AWS ELB to use the certificate and point to the AWS webserver.
After this use the ELB IP in the DNS settings.
There are other options too like procuring the subdomain certificate and installing it on the webserver on AWS.