I have an application on Heroku that currently does not use ACM.
Our customers provide us a domain, point their DNS to the provided CNAME, and then provide us a SSL certificate to upload manually.
We would like to cut out the SSL portion as it's a huge burden for people. It appears Heroku ACM can take care of this for us.
My concern is with existing domains / certificates.
What will happen to them if I enable ACM?
I'd imagine they get taken care of with a tiny bit of downtime, but don't want to get into a spot where we've broke their domain and no longer have the certificates they provided us.
Related
I need to point thousands of TLDs to the same Rails app hosted in Heroku.
So far I have automated the process of adding domains to CloudFlare and Heroku, but SSL has proven to be a challenge.
Heroku has ACM on by default, which will fail when the CF orange cloud is on (which I need on).
I can't turn ACM off with Flexible SSL in CloudFlare because I need SSL from edge to origin.
I can't use an Origin CA because Heroku only supports 1 certificate per app (not per domain) and I'm going to be well over 100 domains. I also don't want to have to manage multiple certificates which contain multiple TLDs and re-generate the certificate with every single domain in it every time I add a new domain.
Question: Is there a downside to just pointing www and # to my-app.herokuapps.com?
So far it works perfectly from a DNS perspective with Full SSL in CloudFlare, even though it says in Heroku docs that the herokudns.com strategy is encouraged. I just wanted to ensure there aren't any deprecations or hidden limits that will suddenly make this stop working after I've committed to it.
I'm also open to any other solutions.
I would like to set some SSL certificates for one app I have on heroku (a simple application based on nodeJS + Vue).
I know if I upgrade to the Hobby Plan (7$ for month) I can have it automatically.
But for now it would too much money for a test application, so I am wondering if I can achieve some similar goal also with a Free Plan.
so:
Is it possible to set SSL certificate for an app on Heroku JUST with the Free Plan?
Maybe in a complicated/tricky way via CLI?
From the Heroku pages and documentation it looks not possible.
But I have to ask :)
Here I have a better approach to deal with this. As Heroku Doesn't provide SSL for Free Plan.
But You can use Cloudflare which gives free SSL.
You can Use Cloudflare As Bridge For SSL.
Requirement:
Cloudflare Account
Your Application should not have inbuild SSL redirection (like redirect-ssl)
Otherwise, This will result in Too Many Redirect Error
Step 1: Point Your domain to CloudFlare. You basically open an account an enter your domain when prompted. You may be given instructions to change your domain name servers.
Step 2: Add Cname Record of Heroku Server in DNS of Cloudflare. Instructions are here
Here You will get Some SSL Security Issue.
Step 3: Now Change Your SSL/TLS encryption mode to Flexible (Not Full). *Important
Now Understand the Working:-
Client(Browser) Make Request to https://example.com
First, the request reaches the Cloudflare with SSL. (User see encrypted connection to the server.)
Then Cloudflare makes request to Heroku Server(Origin) with Non-SSL (Non-Https and Unencrypted).
Then Heroku Server (Origin) returns the Response with Non-SSL to Cloudflare.
At the end Cloudflare forward the request to Client (Browser.)
You might think, What is the benefit of just encrypting half system.
but "Something is better then nothing".
You are here because you don't want to spent money on heroku paid dynos.
This method is better for those who is using http. Atleast it protects the most vulnerable side (client side). Where most of the attack happen. There is very less chances of attack between cloudflare and your server. Because of network reach.
Having less vulnerable probability is better then 100% vulnerable system
I have tested this method and working on https://www.auedbaki.com
Late response but I'm adding here I just spent an hour trying to setup SSL with Heroku - resulting in a dead end.
The bottom line is that Heroku mentions they offer free SSL certificates but that's really not the case unless you have a Hobby ($7/mo) or Pro plan.
This link has more details and feedback from other users facing the same issue.
The answer above about LetsEncrypt is incorrect. Although you can get a free certificate, it cannot be included in a free Heroku app.
Other users have pointed to this article with a step-by-step guide but the guide is outdated and the 'Labs' option mentioned does not work with Heroku anymore.
see comments below for some alternative suggestions
In my specific case, I was able to get a free SSL on zeit.
Here's how you get FULL SSL using Cloudflare for FREE.
Step 1: Point Your domain to CloudFlare. You basically open an account an enter your domain when prompted. You may be given instructions to change your domain name servers.
Step 2: Add Cname Record of Heroku Server in DNS of Cloudflare. Instructions are here. Here You will get Some SSL Security Issue.
Step 3: Now Change Your SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full
Step 4: In your DNS settings, you’ll want to create a CNAME: yourdomain.com -> yourapp.herokuapp.com.
(I learned about the general approach here https://mikecoutermarsh.com/adding-ssl-to-heroku-with-cloudflare/ Although it's old, it still works.
I had this issue also. I wanted to set up a custom domain for my free account on Heroku for my React App. I searched so much info on the web and read loads of documents from Heroku support.
The conclusion is that on the Heroku free account, a custom domain name with SSL certificate cannot be setup. If you need SSL with your custom domain name, you need to upgrade to any of their paid hosting accounts.
Heroku does provide SSL certificate for their free account as long as it is not using a custom domain name. So the standard free account URL will be something like this "https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com"
NB. Google Firebase allows free hosting and Custom Domain name with SSL, for up to a certain amount of traffic before charging. For testing an app, this will be a perfect alternative. I am using it. And it was easy to set up my custom domain.
I hope this saves you hours of searching.
Since you don't make explicit if you need to apply the SSL certificate to a custom domain, I think it's necessary to say that according to the Heroku documentation:
Apps using free dynos can use the *.herokuapp.com certificate if they
need SSL.
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ssl
Maybe future readers could find this answer helpful...
If you are using
1]free heroku,
You can't use 1)free ssl or 2)paid ssl
2]paid heroku
1)you get free ssl 2)you can use paid ssl also
Solution
1]get paid heroku
2]move to netlify or other alternatives
Free SSL in Heroku doesn't exist, or let me just say that it's impossible to achieve it on a free plan.
For you to be able to include any form of third party SSL in Heroku, be it paid SSL or Free Third Party SSL, you have to change to Hobby or Professional dynos for the SSL to work.
An easier option, if you're using Heroku, there's no need to buy a third party SSL. Just change to Hobby or Professional dynos.
For you to be able to change the dyno type, select your app, go to sources section on the upper part, just bellow it, click on the Change Dyno Type button.
Hobby Dyno will cost you $7 a month while Professional Dyno will cost you $25 - $500 a month.
After all that, remember to go to your Rails App:
Go to; .../config/environments/production.rb
--> Uncomment the following line:
# config.force_ssl = true
---> To:
config.force_ssl = true
After that, you'll be able to achieve your SSL but not FREE.
If you don't mind hosting your frontend on another service you can host it in Vercel, with free SSL, while you keep your backend at Heroku. Quite straightforward!
https://vercel.com/
One way around this could be setting up a proxy server on a host you can set SSL certificates on and then simply forward requests to the free herokudns domain using encryption as well.
You'd have to have a separate server with something like nginx or httpd running.. I am not sure of a free service to host the proxy, but usually when you sign up for a domain you may get a hosting addon with it, or perhaps people already have acess to an encrypted host and just want to also use Heroku for their node applications.
Setting up a httpd proxy would look somewhat like this (from https://serverfault.com/questions/84821/apache-proxypass-with-ssl):
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80>
ServerName customdomain.com
SSLProxyEngine On
SSLProxyCheckPeerCN on
SSLProxyCheckPeerExpire on
ProxyPass / https://heroku-app-name.herokuapp.com
ProxyPassReverse / https://heroku-app-name.herokuapp.com
</VirtualHost>
This way you have full encryption all the way :)
This is a question rather than an answer, actually. Has anyone tried ZeroSSL? It offers free SSL, and here is an installation guide for Heroku. However, SSL Endpoint is apparently deprecated and not recommended by Heroku, and it appears to be paid addon of Heroku.
$ cat example.crt ca_bundle.crt certificate.crt
I could not make sense of this line in the help. Perhaps, > is missing? Where does example.crt come from, when I only have the following files?
certificate.crt
ca_bundle.crt
private.key
Or can Heroku SSL accept SSL certificates issued from ZeroSSL?
I am trying to lunch new servers automatically when needed but I am having some difficulty getting the certificate before making the server live. What I want to do is run a setup script which gets all the packages, websites and certificates ready and after that add the server to production. However, Letsencrypt wants me to verify that the server requesting the certificate is actually the website which replies to requests. How can I get the Letsencrypt certificate before adding the server to production? I don't want requests to the real website to be routed to the new server until it is fully setup and has the certificates.
One solution I thought of is to save the certificates on an AWS S3 bucket and synchronize them whenever a renewal is needed. Then when I setup a new server I just get the latest certificate from my AWS S3 bucket and I don't have to worry about getting the certificate from the CA until after the server is added to production.But this solution doesn't seem "clean" and would require me to have an S3 bucket just for my Letsencrypt certificate which also adds another weakness where a certificate could be stolen from.
Is there a more simple solution which I haven't thought of yet?
In a load-balanced (LB) scenario, you should consider having exactly one entity responsible for performing LE certificate acquisition. Things get complicated with multiple entities doing this asynchronously - you'd need to be able to guarantee that the ACME challenges get routed to the relevant server(s), and your LB doesn't have that information (without additional complexity).
So I'd suggest either:
Terminating HTTPS at your load-balancer. Then none of your servers need to care about HTTPS or certificates.
Having one "special" server that's responsible for interacting with LE, and then distributing the cert to the other servers. The details of how you do that is implementation-dependent, because it depends on how you're managing server/service configuration.
I want to connect a custom domain to an app built on Heroku. Can someone confirm that I actually need to buy a certificate and in addition buy the SSL addon on Heroku?
Do I need both or is one of them enough? What is the point of the addon?
/Knut
If you are already using paid dynos (e.g. Hobby dynos) then you can save some costs by using Heroku SSL for free in your app, instead of paying for the SSL Endpoint add on.
This is assuming your app doesn't need to support really old browsers (see Minimum supported browser versions.
These add ons basically provide the protocol support your app needs for SSL with your private domain.
However, regardless of which of the above 2 you choose, you will still need to acquire in addition an SSL certificate. There are all kinds of different offerings for the actual certificate, including free certificates e.g. from Let's Encrypt.
See here for instructions on using a free Let's Encrypt certificate on Heroku with Heroku SSL.
Bottom line: If you are already using paid dynos, it should be possible for you to add full SSL support for your custom Heroku domain for free.
If however you find the above too bewildering, you might want to pay a few bucks for a service such as Expedited SSL, which gives you a certificate (for a monthly fee) and takes care of the whole issue of installing it and keeping it updated on Heroku.
Heroku has made it even easier to use SSL for custom domains now assuming you're not on the free tier plan (if you pay for at least one dyno you're good to go).
https://blog.heroku.com/announcing-automated-certificate-management
Basically, once you have a paid plan for your app., Heroku will generate the certs for you and any custom domains you have added. Then you need to check that you have the right forwarding setup by your domain provider etc.
To add ssl to an existing app you can run:
$ heroku certs:auto:enable -a <app name>
Then run the following command and make sure your custom domains are returned:
$heroku domains
We're having an issue with securing an intranet / internet website with SSL where
we can't know the qualified domain name in advance.
Basically, I'm trying to make a program that will be installed on a webserver
outside my direct control, to be accessable over intra- or internet. In either case
I want it to be secure via SSL (https). To do this, I would like to include and
install a SSL certificate on the target machine. My installer is fully prepackaged
and should not require any particular during- or postinstall intervention from my
end. Problem is, I can't know ahead of time the target machine's name or domain
name, so as far as I can tell the SSL connection will be returning warnings (or
worse?) when accessed, since the certificate I include will (must) have a different
name on it.
I really want to avoid those warnings, but I still want to keep it secure. Is there
any way to install a SSL connection without certificate warnings without the domain
name known ahead of time?
Thanks for any help you folks can give.
What you want to do is not possible. Here's why.
A certificate will include a set of names (Common Name, possibly along with Subject Alternative Names, possibly including wildcard names).
The client's web browser will do the following:
The user wanted to visit "https://myapp.mydomain.com/blog/posts/1".
The request is via SSL and the domain name in the request is "myapp.mydomain.com".
Get the certificate from the Web server.
Ensure that at least one of the names in the certificate is exactly equal to, or wildcard-matches, the domain name in the request.
Display the page.
Therefore, you need a certificate with the exact domain name (or a wildcard matching the exact domain name) by which the application will be used. And the certificate needs to be available at the same time as, or later than, the time when the exact domain name of the website becomes known, and cannot be made available any earlier.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that somehow a certificate can "create" or "install" an SSL connection. That is false. The Web server - Apache, IIS, Nginx, LigHTTPD, or whichever one you happen to use - is the program that knows how to every aspect of SSL connectivity. The certificate is just a file that the Web server sends to the client, without even opening or using in any way.
Additionally, the author of a webapp to be distributed is not responsible for creating or distributing certificates, and should not be under the misapprehension that he is responsible. Only the website maintainer should be responsible for obtaining a certificate for his website. As another person remarked, in your installation process or perhaps in a post-installation process, you may ask the person installing the webapp for a certificate. But that is the best you can do.
The best you can do is to buy a wildcard SSL certificate - but wait, it's not what you think. You still need to know the second-level domain (the TLD being ".com") ahead of time. You can effectively ask for a cert that covers *.foo.com - then any site, a.foo.com, b.foo.com will be covered. Of course, these certs are more expensive that FQDN certs because you are doing the buggers out of some extra coin.
-Oisin
Each of those sites should have their own SSL certificate. Why not prompt the user to provide the cert file during installation?
In most (if not all) cases, the SSL certificate is associated with the webserver (apache, IIS, etc.) and is not part of your application. It's up to the admin of the web server to install the certificate and not you as the author of the program.
If your installation program does have the ability to modify the web server configuration, and you are willing to have it use a self-signed certificate, you can script the creation of the certificate to allow the domain name to be input. However, I sense this is not really available to you. Also, a self-signed certificate will generally cause certificate warnings.
If I understand you correctly there might be a solution to your problem now. This solution won't help you, however, if you have no control over specifying what SSL certificates are served from the web server where your program is installed (as mentioned by someone else). If your program itself contains a web server you won't have this issue.
If you start with a trusted https website, you can make cross-domain TLS (SSL) XmlHttpRequests to the web servers that are running your application. This is made possible using the opensource Forge project. The project uses a TLS implementation written in JavaScript and a small Flash swf to handle the cross-domain requests. Your program will need to serve an XML Flash policy file that grants the trusted website access to the web server running the application.
Your program will also need to generate a self-signed SSL certificate and upload it to the trusted website. From there, each program's certificate can be included as trusted via the JavaScript TLS implementation. Alternatively, you can have your program upload its certificate to be signed by a CA you create, using a common or subject alternative name that is appropriate for your use (it doesn't have to be the domain name). Then you can use JavaScript to trust the CA certificate and look for the correct name on each certificate.
For more details check out the Forge project at github:
http://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/blob/master/README
The links to the blog posts at the end provide more in-depth information about how it works.