How do I verify if I have secured end to end encryption on my AWS FARGATE container? Have mentioned the approach below :
Application Load balancer listening on 443. Uses a certificate from AWS Certificate Manager.
Target group's protocol is HTTPS on port 8443. The health check protocol is HTTPS too.
Spring boot application's docker image running on the container, host/container port is 8443. Have the same certificate in the classpath of the application in a PKCS12 file (has the certificate and private key in it).
Docker image's and application's port is 8443.
It says a secure connection when I hit the application URL. I understand SSL offloading happens at the load balancer level in ALB.
But does the above approach mean an end to end encryption has been achieved? And how do I verify that?
I understand SSL offloading happens at the load balancer level in ALB
SSL offloading is an option with an ALB, if you have target groups using HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS. Offloading implies you're terminating SSL at the load balancer, then using http between the ALB and the target, which isn't what's happening for you.
But does the above approach mean an end to end encryption has been achieved?
If you're using an HTTPS target group, like you are doing, you ought to have end to end encryption. You've got the right idea to verify though, so you can be sure.
And how do I verify that?
You can ensure the traffic to your ALB is using SSL by enabling access logs. You're also seeing SSL in your browser.
You can test the targets are receiving SSL traffic by running something like tcpdump or ssldump (or both!) on your target web server.
Related
So I have a flask web application. I need to have this be HTTPS only. So I'm pretty lost here:
Application Load Balancer -> Target Group -> EC2 Instance (:443) -> ??? -> Flask
So originally I had the following in my http stack:
nginx -> gunicorn -> Flask
That worked for http. And it makes sense how to set up a target group to point to the exposed port of nginx in http. You just provide the port. easy.
However where I am completely lost is when you add HTTPS into the equation. You have AWS provide you with the certificate itself through ACM (Aws certificate manager). However, very specifically AWS Certificate Manager does not allow the created certificates to be exported. So you cannot provide nginx with the certificate, but to use https (443) on nginx you have to provide the ssl_certificate.crt on the server block itself...
So from reading it seems like you don't need nginx... do I need gunicorn? Do I just run flask? If so how does it 'expose' port :443?
I am truly at a loss at how to connect Flask to the target group. Can any one point me to the correct directon? I've exhausted all googling options.
Your confusion is in thinking you need SSL between the load balancer and the Flask application. You can terminate SSL at the load balancer. This will provide SSL between any clients like web browsers and your AWS infrastructure, and you will only have non-SSL traffic inside your virtual private network, between the load balancer and the EC2 instance.
Create the SSL certificate in AWS ACM, and attach it to a listener on the Application Load Balancer. Have both listeners in your load balancer (the port 80 listener without SSL, and the port 443 listener with SSL) forward to the target group. Have the target group connect to your EC2 instance over port 80, or 8080 or 5000 or whatever port you have Flask running on. I think Flask defaults to port 5000?
If you are under some sort of requirements for end-to-end encryption that requires you to setup SSL between the load balancer and the EC2 instance, like some regulatory requirements, then you would need to go back to using Nginx and either purchase an SSL certificate somewhere, or setup a free Let's Encrypt certificate, that you could use with Nginx.
I am running a Gatsby site in development mode as a dev server on EC2 with a loadbalancer pointing from port 80 to 8000. I have setup a cname on my domain dns to point to the load balancer this works fine. However I need to display this page as an iframe in sanity.io as a web preview and it requires https.
I've read through this https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/classic/elb-create-https-ssl-load-balancer.html and most of it is pretty straight forward for the most part.
What I have done so far is created a listener for 443 https on the loadbalancer and added https 443 to the security group. i have succsufully issued a certificate to the subdomain I am using with aws and attached it to the loadbalancer listener.
Gatsby has a article about custom certs for development mode here https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/local-https/#custom-key-and-certificate-files What I am looking for is the cert file, the authority file and the key file in order to pass this command below
Where in the aws certificate manager do I find these files. I think that is the last piece I need to get https working, correct me if I am wrong.
thanks ahead of time.
gatsby develop --https --key-file ../relative/path/to/key.key --cert-file ../relative/path/to/cert.crt --ca-file ../relative/path/to/ca.crt
This is the process I used to request my certficate and it says it's issued
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/gs-acm-request-public.html
But how do I use it with the custom https command with gatsby?
There is a export option but it says only for private keys. Do I need to create a private key and then I can export these files I need?
Do I even need to run https on gatsby's side. I watched a video using apache and no change was made to the apache server to get https working with the loadbalancer.
Here is a screenshot of my loadbalancer listenr
Here is a image of my security groups
If I run the --https for gatsby develop it breaks my site I can no longer visit it via the loadbalancer or port 8000. So not sure what to do here.
I would suggest not to encrypt the connection between your ELB and the EC2 instances. If your EC2 instances are not publicly reachable, but only through the load balancer instead, it is best practice to terminate the SSL connection on the load balancer. No need to encrypt HTTP requests inside an AWS VPC (i.e. between ELB and target instances).
You can create a load balancer that listens on both the HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443) ports. If you specify that the HTTPS listener sends requests to the instances on port 80, the load balancer terminates the requests and communication from the load balancer to the instances is not encrypted. [1]
There is some discussion (e.g. on the blog of Kevin Burke) whether it is necessary to encrypt traffic inside a VPC. [2] However, most people are probably not doing it.
What it means for you: Use the same instance protocol for your targets as before: HTTP via port 8000 for both listeners. Do not set up SSL for your Gatsby service. Use a plain HTTP server config instead. No changes are necessary to ELB targets when using SSL termination on the load balancer.
References
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/classic/elb-create-https-ssl-load-balancer.html
[2] https://acloud.guru/forums/aws-certified-security-specialty/discussion/-Ld2pfsORD6ns5dDK5Y7/tlsssl-termination?answer=-LecNy4QX6fviP_ryd7x
AWS Network Load Balancers support TLS termination. This means a certificate can be created in AWS Certificate Manager and installed onto a NLB and then TCP connections using TLS encryption will be decrypted at the NLB and then either re-encrypted or passed through to a non-encrypted listener. Details are here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/network/create-tls-listener.html.
The benefits of using AWS Certificate Manager are that the certificate will be managed and rotated automatically by AWS. No need to put public-facing certificates on private instances.
I'd like to route TCP connections to the NLB based on the SNI, i.e. connections to the same port and IP can be routed to different targets based on the server name that was requested by the client. Whilst I can see that multiple TLS certificates for a given listener are supported using SNI to determine which certificate to serve up, I don't see how to configure listeners based on SNI.
I have therefore put HAProxy behind a NLB and want to route to different backends using SNI. I terminate TLS with the client at the NLB, reencrypt the traffic between NLB and HAProxy using a self-signed certificate on HAProxy, then route to the backends using unencyrpted TCP.
(client) --TLS/TCP--> (NLB on port 443) --TLS/TCP--> (AWS target group on port 5000, running HAProxy) --TCP--> backends on different IPs/ports
Does AWS NLB pass through the SNI details to the target groups?
If I connect directly to HAProxy (not via NLB) then I can route to the backend of choice by using SNI, but I can't get the SNI routing to work if I connect via the NLB.
According to this SO answer and to the istio docs, if you terminate TLS on the load balancer it won't carry SNI to the target group. I had the exact same issue and I ended up solving it by setting the host as '*' on the ingress Gateway and then specifying the hosts on the different VirtualServices (as recommended here).
I think that this solution could also work but didn't tried it. You would have to set the certificate on istio Gateway secret and do a TLS pass through on the NLB, but then you can't use the AWS ACM SSL certificates as pointed out on the previous link.
Greeting
I have created the Certificate through Certificate Manager in AWS, the free one. And successfully verified as well as put it in the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). The status of the certificate shows it's issued and Is Used? shows Yes in the Certificate Manager.
Overall, I have completed these two steps without any problem, but the SSL does not work with my domain name. When I type "mydomain.com" with or without prefix http://, it works, but when I type "mydomain.com" with https:// prefix, it does not work
I have researched to find the solution and a way to install SSL into Microsoft Windows IIS on AWS, but no document describes about that.
Can anyone share this experience? I really appreciate
Looking forward for the reply and thanks
You do not need to setup SSL on your web server when you use a load balancer. Assign the SSL certificate to the load balancer (as you did). Then in your HTTPS listener in the load balancer listen on HTTPS, but connect to your web server over HTTP.
In the Amazon Console for your load balancer under the "Listeners" tab, the "Load Balancer Protocol" will be HTTPS and the "Instance Protocol" will be HTTP.
This has the benefit of offloading SSL to the load balancer which decreases CPU load on your web server.
If you do want to setup SSL on your web server, then you cannot use the Amazon SSL certificate. You will need to use the standard methods and purchase a certificate from someone else.
I am trying to configure an AWS Application Load Balancer (vs. a Classic Load Balancer) to distribute traffic to my EC2 web servers. For compliance reasons I need end to end SSL/HTTPS encryption for my application.
It seems to me the simplest way to ensure that traffic is encrypted the entire way between clients and the web servers is to terminate the HTTPS connection on the web servers.
My first question: Is it possible to pass through HTTPS traffic through an AWS Application Load Balancer to the web servers behind the load balancer in this manner?
From what I've gathered from the AWS documenation, it is possible to pass traffic through in this manner with a Classic Load Balancer (via TCP pass through). However, the Application Load Balancer looks like it wants to terminate the HTTPS connection itself, and then do one of the following:
send traffic to the web servers unencrypted, which I can't do for compliance reasons
create a new HTTPS connection to the web servers, which seems like extra work load
My second question: is that understanding of the documentation correct?
Terminating the SSL connection at the web servers requires you to change the load balancer listener from HTTPS to TCP. ALB doesn't support this, only classic ELB. Further, if you were terminating the SSL at the web server the load balancer wouldn't be able to inspect the request since it wouldn't be able to decrypt it, so it wouldn't be able to do all the fancy new routing stuff that the ALB supports.
If you actually want to use an ALB for the new features it provides, and you need end-to-end encryption, you will have to terminate SSL at the ALB and also have an SSL certificate installed on the web servers. The web server certificate could be something like a self-signed cert since only the ALB is going to see that certificate, not the client.
I assume you need end-to-end encryption for compliance reasons (PCI, HIPAA, etc.). Otherwise there isn't a very compelling reason to go through the hassle of setting it up.