WebSocket through SSL with Apache reverse proxy - apache

Question

On the client side, I am trying to establish the wss connection:
var ws = new WebSocket("wss://wsserver.com/test")
and it returns an error:
WebSocket connection to 'wss://wsserver.com/test' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400
The full headers are:
Request Headers
GET wss://wsserver.com/test HTTP/1.1
Host: wsserver.com
Connection: Upgrade
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Upgrade: websocket
Origin: https://website.net
Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, sdch, br
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Sec-WebSocket-Key: Tj9AJ5TKglNf5LoHsQTpvQ==
Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; client_max_window_bits
Response Headers
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials:true
Access-Control-Allow-Origin:https://website.net
Connection:close
Content-Length:18
Content-Type:text/plain; charset=utf-8
Date:Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:03:45 GMT
Server:Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)
Vary:Origin
X-Content-Type-Options:nosniff
The server side is running on go at port 8888 behind an Apache reverse proxy. This is the Apache configuration:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName website.com
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass "/" "wss://localhost:8888/"
mod_proxy and mod_proxy_wstunnel are installed.
Is there something missing here? It seems like the request goes through but no connection is established.

Answer 1

I ended up solving this problem by using this configuration for the virtual host, which filters requests using the HTTP headers:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName website.com
RewriteEngine On
# When Upgrade:websocket header is present, redirect to ws
# Using NC flag (case-insensitive) as some browsers will pass Websocket
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} =websocket [NC]
RewriteRule ^/ws/(.*) wss://localhost:8888/ws/$1 [P,L]
# All other requests go to http
ProxyPass "/" "http://localhost:8888/"
I'm leaving this as a reference in case it helps others

Answer 2

In order to place a secure reverse proxy server in front of an insecure websocket server, you could do this:
<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLEngine on
SSLProxyEngine on
SSLProtocol -all -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1 +TLSv1.2
SSLCipherSuite HIGH:aNULL:eNULL:EXPORT:DES:RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!SRP:!CAMELLIA
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/cert
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/key
SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/chain
ServerName website.com
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} =websocket [NC]
RewriteRule /(.*) ws://localhost:8888/$1 [P,L]
</VirtualHost>
This will take a request inbound for wss://website.com:443, and reverse proxy it to ws://localhost:8888.
If the websocket server is also secure, you can simply change
ws://localhost:8888 to
wss://website.com:8888

Answer 3

This is my setup of virtualhost that worked for me, I have .netcore app on docker with SignalR as a websocket service.
On 5000 my .netcore app is running, and on /chatHub my signalR listens.
Will be helpful for future comers with same problem.
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
RewriteEngine On
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests Off
# allow for upgrading to websockets
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} =websocket [NC]
RewriteRule /(.*) ws://localhost:5000/$1 [P,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} !=websocket [NC]
RewriteRule /(.*) http://localhost:5000/$1 [P,L]
ProxyPass "/" "http://localhost:5000/"
ProxyPassReverse "/" "http://localhost:5000/"
ProxyPass "/chatHub" "ws://localhost:5000/chatHub"
ProxyPassReverse "/chatHub" "ws://localhost:5000/chatHub"
ServerName site.com
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/site.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/site.com/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
Source: http://shyammakwana.me/server/websockets-with-apache-reverse-proxy-with-ssl.html

Answer 4

# pimgeek's Comment:
I think instead of
RewriteRule ^/nodered/comms wss://localhost:1880/nodered/comms [P,L]
you could have utilized $1 as follow:
RewriteRule ^/nodered/comms$ wss://localhost:1880/$1 [P,L]
Also, this should work aswell:
RewriteRule ^/nodered/comms$ wss://localhost:1880$1 [P,L]
Notice the not needed / after the port, since $1 includes already a / at the beginning

Answer 5

In my case, I needed to activate "SSLProxyEngine on" to make the whole thing works...
I ended up with this 2 lines solution on Debian / Apache 2.4 (used port is 4321)
SSLProxyEngine on
ProxyPass /wss wss://127.0.0.1:4321/