Secure a website with client-side ssl certification

Hi all,

I'm running ISPConfig on SUSE 10 installed following the perfect setup how to on this website.

I need to protect a connection to one of my website using a SSH Certificate.
I want to use a client-side certificate to authenticate only who really has the certificate installed in his pc.

I've found a couple of article (one and two for example) that describe how to do that.

Do you think I can apply them to an ISPConfig configuration?
I'm worried to edit something wrong in my box.

Is there anybody that have already done it?
Any suggestion on how to proceed??

Thanks!

 

I haven't tried this, so I can't tell if it works.
But if you're worried about your current system, you could try it on a test system.

 

I'm sweating hard to do that but so far so long something is working.
First I set up the testing machine totally similar to my live server
I've created my own CA and now I can provide new Certificate for my users.

At this point I need to hard redirect the traffic for my vhost to port 443 and enable SSL.

To do that I should edit, tell me if I'm wrong, this file:
/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhost-ssl.template and save it with somename.conf

Or edit httpd.conf ?
Or edit /etc/apache2/ssl-global.conf ??

Basically I'm following this tutorial . Look for point 4.

Help please!

 

Looking better I saw that httpd.conf include /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/*.conf

So now I'm trying to follow that white rabbit

 

ok,
I've edited my personal file .conf in /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/

and here it is:

Code:

# Template for a VirtualHost with SSL
# Note: to use the template, rename it to /etc/apache2/vhost.d/yourvhost.conf.
# Files must have the .conf suffix to be loaded.
#
# See /usr/share/doc/packages/apache2/README.QUICKSTART for further hints
# about virtual hosts.

#
# This is the Apache server configuration file providing SSL support.
# It contains the configuration directives to instruct the server how to
# serve pages over an https connection. For detailing information about these 
# directives see <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_ssl.html>
#
#   For the moment, see <URL:http://www.modssl.org/docs/> for this info. 
#   The documents are still being prepared from material donated by the
#   modssl project.
# 
# Do NOT simply read the instructions in here without understanding
# what they do.  They're here only as hints or reminders.  If you are unsure
# consult the online docs. You have been warned.  
#

#   Until documentation is completed, please check http://www.modssl.org/
#   for additional config examples and module docmentation.  Directives
#   and features of mod_ssl are largely unchanged from the mod_ssl project
#   for Apache 1.3.

<IfDefine SSL>
<IfDefine !NOSSL>

##
## SSL Virtual Host Context
##

<VirtualHost _default_:443>

	#  General setup for the virtual host
	DocumentRoot "/var/www/web1/web"
	#ServerName test.myhost.co.uk:443
	#ServerAdmin something...
	ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error_log
	TransferLog /var/log/apache2/access_log

	#   SSL Engine Switch:
	#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
	SSLEngine on

	#   SSL Cipher Suite:
	#   List the ciphers that the client is permitted to negotiate.
	#   See the mod_ssl documentation for a complete list.
	#SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL

	#   Server Certificate:
	#   Point SSLCertificateFile at a PEM encoded certificate.  If
	#   the certificate is encrypted, then you will be prompted for a
	#   pass phrase.  Note that a kill -HUP will prompt again.  Keep
	#   in mind that if you have both an RSA and a DSA certificate you
	#   can configure both in parallel (to also allow the use of DSA
	#   ciphers, etc.)
	SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl_mycompany/myCA/private/server-key-cert.pem
	#SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-dsa.crt

	#   Server Private Key:
	#   If the key is not combined with the certificate, use this
	#   directive to point at the key file.  Keep in mind that if
	#   you've both a RSA and a DSA private key you can configure
	#   both in parallel (to also allow the use of DSA ciphers, etc.)
	#SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.key
	#SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl.key/server-dsa.key

	#   Server Certificate Chain:
	#   Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the
	#   concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the
	#   certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively
	#   the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile
	#   when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server
	#   certificate for convinience.
	#SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca.crt

	#   Certificate Authority (CA):
	#   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
	#   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
	#   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
	#   Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks
	#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
	#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
	#SSLCACertificatePath /etc/apache2/ssl.crt
	SSLCACertificateFile /etc/ssl_mycompany/myCA/certs/myca.crt

	#   Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL):
	#   Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client
	#   authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all
	#   of them (file must be PEM encoded)
	#   Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks
	#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
	#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
	#SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl
	#SSLCARevocationFile /etc/ssl_mycompany/myCA/crl/myca.crl

	#   Client Authentication (Type):
	#   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
	#   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
	#   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
	#   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
	#SSLVerifyClient require
	SSLVerifyDepth  1

	#   Access Control:
	#   With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based
	#   on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server
	#   variable checks and other lookup directives.  The syntax is a
	#   mixture between C and Perl.  See the mod_ssl documentation
	#   for more details.
	<Location />
	SSLRequire ( %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)-/ and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "my company Ltd" )
	#SSLRequire (    %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \
	#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \
	#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \
	#            and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \
	#            and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20       ) \
	#           or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/
	</Location>

	#   SSL Engine Options:
	#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
	#   o FakeBasicAuth:
	#     Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
	#     the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
	#     user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
	#     Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
	#     file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
	#   o ExportCertData:
	#     This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
	#     SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
	#     server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
	#     authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
	#     into CGI scripts.
	#   o StdEnvVars:
	#     This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
	#     Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
	#     because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
	#     useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
	#     exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
	#   o CompatEnvVars:
	#     This exports obsolete environment variables for backward compatibility
	#     to Apache-SSL 1.x, mod_ssl 2.0.x, Sioux 1.0 and Stronghold 2.x. Use this
	#     to provide compatibility to existing CGI scripts.
	#   o StrictRequire:
	#     This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even
	#     under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied
	#     and no other module can change it.
	#   o OptRenegotiate:
	#     This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
	#     directives are used in per-directory context. 
	#SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +CompatEnvVars +StrictRequire
	
	CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log \
	"%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"

	<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
	    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</Files>
	<Directory "/srv/www/cgi-bin">
	    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</Directory>

	#   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
	#   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
	#   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
	#   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
	#   approach you can use one of the following variables:
	#   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
	#     This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
	#     SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates
	#     the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
	#     this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
	#     mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
	#   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
	#     This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
	#     SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
	#     alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
	#     practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
	#     this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
	#     works correctly. 
	#   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
	#   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
	#   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
	#   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
	#   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
	#   "force-response-1.0" for this.
	SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
		 nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
		 downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

	#   Per-Server Logging:
	#   The home of a custom SSL log file. Use this when you want a
	#   compact non-error SSL logfile on a virtual host basis.
	CustomLog /var/log/apache2/ssl_request_log   ssl_combined

</VirtualHost>                                  

</IfDefine>
</IfDefine>

But when I try to start Apache2 with SSH I've got this error:

Code:

test:/etc/apache2/vhosts # /etc/init.d/apache2 startssl
Starting httpd2 (prefork) startproc:  exit status of parent of /usr/sbin/httpd2-prefork: 1
                                                                      failed

Do you know why????

other question: do I have to enable the SSL option in ISPConfig for my website and import the server certificate I've created before?
Thanks!

 

What's the output of

Code:

httpd -t

?

 

Code:

test:/etc/apache2/vhosts.d # httpd -t
Syntax OK

 

I had got an error concerning the log file location.
It was looking for the SSL log in /srv/www/logs/ssl_request_log

I changed it to /var/www/log/apache2/ssl_request_log
Re-started apache with SSL and I had got a "done" output!

Now i've tried to access my website using SSL, I've also installed my cerficate in my broswer but I receive a:

Code:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Looking at the logs:

/etc/log/apache2/error_log

Code:

[Mon Jul 23 10:38:21 2007] [error] [client 192.168.22.152] access to /usr/share/apache2/error/HTTP_FORBIDDEN.html.var failed, reason: SSL requirement expression not fulfilled (see SSL logfile for more details)

/var/log/apache2/ssl_request_log

Code:

[23/Jul/2007:10:50:30 +0100] 192.168.22.152 TLSv1 RC4-MD5 "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" -
[23/Jul/2007:10:50:30 +0100] 192.168.22.152 TLSv1 RC4-MD5 "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)"

now?

 

What'S in Apache's SSL error log?

 

I thought this file was the SSL log: /var/log/apache2/ssl_request_log

which file do i have to look for it??

 

What's the output of

Code:

ls -l /var/log/apache2

?

 

Code:

test:~ # ls -l /var/log/apache2
total 140
drwxr-x---  2 root root  4096 Jul 20 16:57 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root  4096 Jul 23 23:59 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 97466 Jul 23 11:18 access_log
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 20462 Jul 23 11:18 error_log
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    10 Jul 23 11:16 rc.out
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  6060 Jul 23 11:18 ssl_request_log

 

Hm, there's no SSL error log...

 

Actually there wasn't an access log neither.
I've created it.

Maybe I can do the same for this one too.

Do you know where apache is expecting the logfile to be?

Maybe I can edit the conf file (if it exists somewhere) to let apache know where it has to write.

 

You can create an error log within the SSL vhost configuration: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#errorlog

 

Well well, now it works... almost works!
Here there is my vhost file:

Code:

<IfDefine SSL>
<IfDefine !NOSSL>

##
## SSL Virtual Host Context
##

<VirtualHost _default_:443>

	#  General setup for the virtual host
	DocumentRoot /var/www/web1/web/
	ServerName test.myserver.co.uk
	ServerAdmin [email protected]
	ErrorLog /var/www/web1/log/error_log.test
	TransferLog /var/www/web1/log/access_log.test

	#   SSL Engine Switch:
	#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
	SSLEngine on

	#   SSL Cipher Suite:
	#   List the ciphers that the client is permitted to negotiate.
	#   See the mod_ssl documentation for a complete list.
	#SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL

	#   Server Certificate:
	#   Point SSLCertificateFile at a PEM encoded certificate.  If
	#   the certificate is encrypted, then you will be prompted for a
	#   pass phrase.  Note that a kill -HUP will prompt again.  Keep
	#   in mind that if you have both an RSA and a DSA certificate you
	#   can configure both in parallel (to also allow the use of DSA
	#   ciphers, etc.)
	SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl_company/myCA/private/server-key-cert.pem

	#   Certificate Authority (CA):
	#   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
	#   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
	#   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
	#   Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks
	#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
	#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
	SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl_company/myCA/certs
	SSLCACertificateFile /etc/ssl_company/myCA/certs/myca.crt

	#   Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL):
	#   Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client
	#   authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all
	#   of them (file must be PEM encoded)
	#   Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks
	#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
	#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
	#SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl
	#SSLCARevocationFile /etc/ssl_company/myCA/crl/myca.crl

	#   Client Authentication (Type):
	#   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
	#   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
	#   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
	#   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
	SSLVerifyClient require
	SSLVerifyDepth  1

	#   Access Control:
	#   With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based
	#   on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server
	#   variable checks and other lookup directives.  The syntax is a
	#   mixture between C and Perl.  See the mod_ssl documentation
	#   for more details.
	<Location /web/index.php>
		SSLRequire ( %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)-/ and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_L} eq "London" )
	</Location>

	#   SSL Engine Options:
	#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
	#   o FakeBasicAuth:
	#     Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
	#     the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
	#     user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
	#     Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
	#     file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
	#   o ExportCertData:
	#     This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
	#     SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
	#     server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
	#     authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
	#     into CGI scripts.
	#   o StdEnvVars:
	#     This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
	#     Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
	#     because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
	#     useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
	#     exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
	#   o CompatEnvVars:
	#     This exports obsolete environment variables for backward compatibility
	#     to Apache-SSL 1.x, mod_ssl 2.0.x, Sioux 1.0 and Stronghold 2.x. Use this
	#     to provide compatibility to existing CGI scripts.
	#   o StrictRequire:
	#     This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even
	#     under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied
	#     and no other module can change it.
	#   o OptRenegotiate:
	#     This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
	#     directives are used in per-directory context. 
	

	SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +CompatEnvVars
	
	CustomLog /var/log/apache2/ssl_request_log \
	"%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"

	<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
	    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</Files>
	<Directory "/srv/www/cgi-bin">
	    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</Directory>

	#   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
	#   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
	#   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
	#   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
	#   approach you can use one of the following variables:
	#   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
	#     This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
	#     SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates
	#     the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
	#     this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
	#     mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
	#   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
	#     This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
	#     SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
	#     alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
	#     practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
	#     this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
	#     works correctly. 
	#   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
	#   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
	#   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
	#   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
	#   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
	#   "force-response-1.0" for this.
	SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
		 nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
		 downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

	#   Per-Server Logging:
	#   The home of a custom SSL log file. Use this when you want a
	#   compact non-error SSL logfile on a virtual host basis.
	CustomLog /var/www/web1/log/ssl_error.log ssl_combined

</VirtualHost>                                  

</IfDefine>
</IfDefine>

When you request the https://mytest.co.uk page it requires a client certificate.
Before it didn't work because of this line:

Code:

<Location />

I'm not sure that

Code:

<Location /web/index.php>

is OK as location but for the moment it does the trick. Any suggestion is very appreciate!

My main problem is that instead of loading the php page the browser try to download the php script. It reads the script like plain text!!

Do you know why?

Thanks!

 

Looking a lot on Internet I've found this page:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=51645
where the suggested to uncomment some lines.

So I edited the mime.types file

Code:

/etc/apache2/mime.types

and I deleted the comment from this line:

Code:

application/x-httpd-php         phtml pht php

Falko as you could notice they are talking about you Perfect How to for debian.

Is that OK to remove the comment from that line or can I have compromised something for ISPConfig?

ps:
if you have an answer can you still reply to the previous post about the Location path?

thanks!

 

The reason to commment out that line was to disable PHP globally so that PHP can be enabled individually for each web site in ISPConfig. Now you're re-enabling PHP globally so that PHP will work for any web site, regardless of what you specify in ISPConfig.
Are you sure that PHP was enabled for that web site when your browser wanted to download the PHP script?

 

That's good to know it! So now it makes sense!

As I've noticed, my virtual website is ignoring any apache directives in the ISPConfig panel (and as you just said it's ignoring also all the other options).

To make everything works I need to update directly my

Code:

/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/myhost.conf

Do you know why, apparently, apache is not readying anymore

Code:

/etc/apache2/vhosts/Vhosts_ispconfig.conf

Could be that it is readying all the option only for the vhost on port 80?

I tried already to change Vhosts_ispconfig.conf file and edit the line about the host to be similar to:

Code:

<VirtualHost 192.168.22.222:443>

but it didn't work.

Actually I don't mind to change manually the

Code:

/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/myhost.conf

file but it would be very nice to keep all the ISPConfig features functional!!

Also if at the end it'll work I'll be very happy to write a "how to" about the client-side authentication installed on ISPConfig!