Cloudfront, ELB and SSL - amazon-web-services

If i use Cloudfront to sit in front of a webserver, which itself is behind an ELB, would the following apply?
I use Route53 to create a domain name record for the CF domain and apply an SSL certificate to that domain to secure the distribution
If CF can not serve the content from the cache then the SSL connection is forward to the the ELB (which fronts the webserver as an origin server)
Therefore i also need to use the same domain name (FQDN) on the ELB (via Route53 CNAME) and apply the same cert there too?
When CF forwards the request through the ELB the SSL is terminated
Is that right ? Will one FQDN cert suffice or better to use a wildcard? Is it better to use the origin server domain name instead?
As i can now use the new AWS certificate manager tool (ACM) to add these certs, does anyone know if CF still require the cost for use of custom SSL cert if using ACM (which makes CF an expensive AWS service)?

If CF can not serve the content from the cache then the SSL connection is forward to the the ELB (which fronts the webserver as an origin server)
The SSL connection is not "forwarded". A new SSL connection is established between CloudFront and the ELB.
The SSL connection between the user and CloudFront is a completely different connection than the one between CloudFront and the ELB. Therefore, there is not requirements on matching the domain names used on the ELB and CloudFront.
Therefore i also need to use the same domain name (FQDN) on the ELB (via Route53 CNAME) and apply the same cert there too?
The only restriction is that the SSL certificate on the ELB must match the domain name used on the ELB. It can be a different SSL cert and domain name than those used on CloudFront.
If you want to use the "Custom SSL" feature and support "All Clients", not just those that support SNI, then yes, you must still pay the extra charges, even is you are using ACM.
Example 1
You can create Route 53 records for www.domain.com and origin.domain.com and an SSL cert for *.domain.com. From these, you would assign www.domain.com to the CloudFront distribution, origin.domain.com to your ELB, and use the wildcard cert on both.
Example 2
You can create Route 53 records for www.domain.com and origin.domain.com and separate SSL certs for www.domain.com and origin.domain.com. From these, you would assign www.domain.com to the CloudFront distribution using the www.domain.com cert, and origin.domain.com to your ELB using the origin.domain.com cert.
Example 3
You can create Route 53 records for www.domain1.com and origin.domain2.com and separate SSL certs for www.domain2.com and origin.domain2.com. From these, you would assign www.domain2.com to the CloudFront distribution using the www.domain2.com cert, and origin.domain2.com to your ELB using the origin.domain2.com cert.

Related

AWS Where to put the https certificate

I would like to make the following structure for my web application
Visitor ==>>> CloudFront-> ALB -> ASG (nginx servers)
I have only one HTTPS certificate for my domain name. I will upload it to ACM but where to attach?
To the Cloudfront? Or to the ALB? Maybe to the hosts? Or everywhere the same?
Can I use the same in all places?
I tried to add it only to the NGINX but it can be used only locally and others from acm
Firstly you can use SSL on all levels (cloudfront, ALB, and Nginx Servers).
For Cloudfront, you need to upload your cert to ACM on us-east-1 region.
On clodfrount configuration page select alternate domain and put your domain to be used, then it will ask cert you need to select it from selection options.
For ALB you need upload it to ACM on ALB region.
While you go to listeners, then you configure listener for 443 or another you can select SSL cert on there.
For Nginx, you can use configure your nginx.conf to use cert. It will ask cert and key, you will put them on somewhere at disk.
BTW, You can configure only on cloudfront for visitors and you don't need to use SSL for internal communication if your data is not too important (Credit card etc.)

Issue AWS certificate for a single subdomain to be used with CloudFront?

My client has a domain example.com hosted somewhere.
We need to create a subdomain cloudfront.example.com in my AWS cloud in order to make my Cloudfront Distribution accessible on that subdomain.
CF requires an SSL certificate to work with a custom domain.
I was only able to find a solution which leads to 4th level subdomains via creating an AWS Hosted Zone (3rd level domain) in my AWS account where I can then create another subdomain (4th level).
Is it possible to register a single record in my client's DNS table to point to my CF Distro?
Yes, you can use the client's DNS. What you need to do:
Use ACM to create an SSL certificate for cloudfront.example.com. You will see a necessary CNAME to confirm the SSL certificate
Add CNAME to your client's DNS that will validate the certificate
In CloudFront, define alternate domain name (CNAME) as cloudfront.example.com
In the client's DNS add a CNAME for cloudfront.example.com to point to your CloudFront distribution domain name (it's going to be some-hash.cloudfront.net)

Link domain to ALB keeping https

Currently, I have a domain(mysite.com) bought in the Google Domain, it's just a domain. My application is hosted on AWS, where I have my application deployed, the setup is quite straightforward - access to the application goes thru ALB(lb-123.com), which has no SSL configured yet. My problem is how to link the domain to ALB throughout HTTPS to my application in AWS which is accessed throughout HTTP. I should be able to access mysite.com using HTTPS and it should access lb-123.com either thru HTTP or HTTPS, but for a client, it should look like it accesses HTTPS.
ALB doesn't have an IP, only DNS - I should use the only CNAME for redirection mysite.com to lb-123.com?
Should I configure HTTTs for ALB too - If so, then what is the right way to do it? What certificate should I use? Is there any free certificate for ALB?
How usually ppl link using HTTPS their domains with any sort of backend which has only DNS name(e.g. AWS ALB)?
The easiest way to get SSL for your ALB is through AWS ACM with provides free SSL certificates:
How can I associate an ACM SSL/TLS certificate with a Classic, Application, or Network Load Balancer?
So in your case, you have to got to AWS ACM, and request a free SSL public SSL cert for your domain. Domain can be at google, it does not matter. Once you verity that you control the domain, you will get a cert issued that you can associate with the ALB.
Then you use CNAME on google to point your domain to ALB's domain.

Can I setup SSL on an AWS provided ALB subdomain without owning a domain?

I have following setup at AWS ECS:
Container with Caddy web-server at 80 port that serves static files and performs proxying of /api/* requests to backend
Container with backend at 8000 port
EC2 instance at ECS
ALB at subdomain http://some-subdomain-12345.us-east-2.elb.amazonaws.com/ (subdomain was provided automatically by AWS) with HTTP Listener
I want to setup SSL certificate and HTTPS Listener for ALB at this subdomain that was provided by AWS - how I can do it?
P.S. I have seen an option for ALB with HTTPS Listener when we are attaching custom domain i.e. example.com and AWS will provide SSL certificate for it. But this is a pet project environment and I don't worry about real domain.
You can put your ALB behind CloudFront, which unlike ALB gives you a TLS certificate by default. So you can address your application at e.g.:
https://d3n6jitgitr0i4.cloudfront.net
Apart from the TLS certificate, it will give you the ability to cache your static resources at CloudFront's edge locations, and improve latency on the TLS handshake roundtrips.
I want to setup SSL certificate and HTTPS Listener for ALB at this subdomain that was provided by AWS - how I can do it?
You can't do this. This is not your domain (AWS owns it) and you can't associate any SSL certificate with it. You have to have your own domain that you control. Once you obtain the domain, you can get free SSL certificate from AWS ACM.
This could be a solution without using subdomains but using path redirection
https://caddy.community/t/caddy-2-reverse-proxy-to-path/9193

How to enable HTTPS for Elastic Beanstalk url

I have enabled HTTPS for my custom domain name (haydenclay.page), but I also need the Beanstalk url (app-name.elasticbeanstalk.com) to run through HTTPS as well.
HTTPS does not work currently, because the cert name matches my custom domain name, yielding: ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID
I need HTTPS because I make API requests, and going from HTTPS to HTTP throws a mixed content error. How can I enabled HTTPS on the beanstalk url?
I have already tried making an alias
Sadly you can't enable https directly for app-name.elasticbeanstalk.com domain. This is because this domain is controlled by AWS. You can only register SSL certificates for domains that you control.
If you want to server your content from EB over ssl, you have generally three options.
Front your instance with load balancer. This is the easiest* way as you can associated ACM SSL certificate with the balancer for your domain.
Front your EB instance with CloudFront (CF). You can setup alternative name for your cloudfront domain with your CF distro and your SSL cert. You can also use ACM for that. Also easy setup, but it should be noted that traffic between CF and your EB instance will be http only, unless you also setup your own SSL cert (not from ACM) on the instances (point 3).
Install your own SSL certificate (not from ACM) directly on the EB instance, using nginx. This requires manual setup and a valid public certificate. Popular choice is LetsEncrypt, to get the SSL cert from.
If you use CloudFlare, go to DNS -> Records
Type: CNAME
name: api
Content: "YOUR_URL.eu-west-1.elasticbeanstalk.com"
Proxy status: Proxied
And call your new url: api.your_domain.com