Based on the documentation Apache allows to request a client cert authentication for one directory and don't request it for another directory.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/ssl_howto.html#arbitraryclients
How is it possible?
I assumed that first TLS/SSL does a handshake (including client certificate validation) and only after it, HTTP request is sent over secured channel. And this HTTP request contains a URL.
So, it looks like to get a URL (a diretory) you need to do (or skip) client certificate authentication.
So, it's not clear for me, how can Apache check URL first and decide later whether to request a client cert authentication or not.
It uses SSL/TLS renegotiation: the server sends a TLS Hello Request message to ask the client to trigger a new handshake by sending a new Client Hello message (and this time the server will send a Certificate Request after its Server Hello message).
The Hello Request message could in principle happen at any time during the HTTP exchange. For this particular feature, the server sends it just after receiving the request (therefore knowing which resource was requested), but before sending its response.
Related
I have a VB.NET website configured in IIS to use client certificate authentication.
When a user opens website url, he gets a popup to choose the certificate. Once the user is on the web page there is a button, clicking this will make a SOAP request to a 3rd party.
Presently I am able to use a single certificate stored on the server to make the SOAP request (by attaching the certificate). Thus the same certificate is used irrespective of which user clicks on the button.
How do I attach the client certificate of the respective user to a SOAP request? Is this possible?
How do I attach the client certificate of the respective user to a SOAP request? Is this possible?
simply attaching the public certificate of client makes little sense. If you need to co-sign the SOAP request with client certificate, then you need to send unsigned SOAP request to client (say, client downloads the request from your web site), sign it, send to server, allow the server to co-sign the SOAP request and then submit this SOAP request to 3rd party.
You cannot upload client certificate to server in order to make SOAP signing on server. It is unsupported and vulnerable approach. Client certificate's private key (which is used to sign data) MUST NEVER leave client machine/device. If you need to sign anything with client certificate, signing operation must be performed on that client only.
I have an application that needs to communicate with a third-party SOAP/WCF API using a client certificate. I have tried everything on the web how to call SOAP/WCF API using a client certificate. But every time I am getting a client certificate authentication failed. Is there is a way to see whether I am passing the client certificate or not? Fiddler is not showing whether the client cert is sent with the request or not.
I'm working on an authentication method for my NodeJS API.
I'm using TLS certificates to verify the client connected to my API server.
My question is: can we have a way to authenticate the response back to the client? Can we use cert for this to(server to client)?
eg: When we call an API from our client we send the certificate with the request which is authenticated and if found valid the server sends the response, can we do it vice-versa, send a certificate in response and have the client validate the certificate.
The whole TLS protocol and the certificates are already built around this idea that you trust the server. I.e. the server during establishing of TLS connection provides a certificate that client can verify by checking if it trusts the CA that has issued the certificate.
Now while this is generally so, you can have libraries that allows to bypass this by not checking the certificate or checking but proceeding anyway, so you have to double check that is not the case. The browser does this automatically.
If you click on a green "Secure" button that is to the left in URL in Chrome e.g. you can click on "certificate" there and see the certificate that is provided by the server. If it's green, then it's trusted and all's good.
P.S. Neither the client not server sends the certificate the whole time back and forth with each request/response. They do it only once during establishing the connection that is called TLS handshake. It's relatively expensive process so you'd better keep the connection.
Description of the Issue:
I am trying to connect to TLS 1.0 from the windows laptop to Windows IIS server. We have mutual authentication set-up at IIS.
Please see below the calls made for the handshake:
So it starts with client hello on frame no 4. And then in the next steps Server sends it’s certificate and ciphers are negotiated. And then on frame no 12, the handshake seems finished. And on frame no 13, client starts sending the application data.
But then again on frame no 14, Server sends a hello and we see a second handshake. Please can you answer my below query.
Question>> In mutual authentication, Client requests for Server Certificate. And then Server requests for the Client certificate. And when both of them has authenticated each other’s certificate, client starts sending application data. Isn’t this a normal process for mutual authentication?
Question>> On Frame 13, Client has already started sharing the application data. Then why is IIS asking for a second hand-shake on frame 21?
Question>> It seems the second hand-shake is for getting the client certificate ( Frame 24). But shouldn’t the Server ask for the Client certificate before frame 13.
In case you agree that this IIS behaviour is wrong, please can you suggest as how to fix this.
Thanks in advance.
This scenario happens if the server does not require mutual authentication for all resources but only when accessing specific resources. Thus:
The initial handshake without client certificates is done (frames 4..12).
The client sends the HTTP request (frame 13).
Based on the request the server realizes that the clients likes to access a resource which requires mutual authentication. The server thus requests a new handshake using the Hello Request (frame 14).
The new handshake is done, this time with client certificates (frames 15..25).
The server sends the HTTP response after the authentication of the client was successful (frames 26,29).
What exactly is the role of the ConnectionToken in SignalR?
I inspected the SignalR handshake in fiddler and saw that a ConnectionToken is being passed in the response to the negotiate request and then passed in all subsequent requests.
However, when inspecting the WS frames, I saw no trace of that ConnectionToken. Is it because fiddler hides it from me or is it simply not passed on the wire?
If it's because it's not passed on the wire, what is its' purpose?
If it is passed on the wire, is it considered to be a secret even if the transport is over ssl? how can an attacker exploit that token?
Connection token is an encrypted string containing the connection id and, if available, user name. It needs to be sent with each http request sent by the client to the server. If a server receives a request without the connection token or if it cannot decrypt the connection token it will reject the request. To read more on connection token and how it works take a look at this article.
You don't see the connection token in websocket frames since the connection token was validated when the websocket was opened (the connect request) and further validation is not needed (it is impossible for someone else to use this websocket). You would see the connection token again in case the connection was dropped and the client tried to reconnect.
Other transports send more http requests (e.g. for sending messages) and you will see that basically each of these requests (except for ping) contain the connection token. You can take a look at the SignalR protocol description I wrote some time ago for more details.