local host ssl socket without certificate - ssl

Would like to write SSL Socket client server application on the same machine (both server and clients are running same machine). Should I use SSL certificate file (.pem file ) or not required.
Just I want encrypt the data before sending via socket.
Can we encrypt the data without .pem file?
Please advice me.
-Bala

SSL has two major steps:
check the identity of the peer, e.g. make sure you talk to the right one and not an imposter (e.g. man in the middle). This is done with certificates.
encrypt the connection, so that anybody listening on the wire cannot understand what's going on. Obviously encryption helps nothing if somebody is actively listening on the wire, because you failed in step#1. In this case you have no end-to-end encryption but an end-to-imposter and imposter-to-end encryption :)
Considering these arguments: do you still want to skip checking the certificate?
If you want it is doable, just look for anonymous authentication, e.g. ADH or aNULL with openssl.

Related

Would it be possible to separate key generation and connection of HTTPS?

I know generally how HTTPS works, and from what I read, it seems that the generation of the encryption key could be done by a computer that isn't the one establishing the connection.
My thought is to create a proxy that isn't actually able to see the traffic going over the SSL connection. To do this, you would have a handshake in the same way as usual between the proxy and the server. However you would pass the encrypted symmetrical key to the proxy from your computer who would then transmit it on to the server. Then, when the server returned an encrypted payload, the proxy would not be able to decrypt it, but would forward it on to the users computer.
Am I missing something fundamental about how HTTPS works?

How can I test my tls implementation written using HTTP component

For my current project i need to implement http over tls at client ,for this i need a local server able to simulate this . is there any online or offline tool. which i can use and and see the handshake in wireshark .
For watching the TLS handshake you might not get far enough with wireshark. For such kind of monitoring you would ensure the security is low enough for wireshark to be able getting the session key from watching the handshake for decoding the later parts. Thus, you need to avoid any forward secrecy.
Otherwise any (https) server that is accessible (and willing to talk) to your client will do.
In case you are in an environment that is supported (e.g. any unix/linux), you might try using openssl. It allows setting up a server that will do handshake. And it will log the handshake such that you will be able looking at what is going on. This will eliminate the need for using wireshark for debugging.
For achieving this you need a Web Server accepting connection over TLS.I have achieved this on Apache Tomcat web Server.
TLS configuration needs to be done in the server.xml file present in config directory of Tomcat webserver. Connector tag needs to be added in the server.xml file that contains information like
TLS version to be used, port, List of supported Cipher Suites, Keystore path and password, Truststore path and password.
Any regular Rest client can be used to make a call like Postman client. But to use that over TLS/SSL certificate is needed to be installed in Chrome browser.
Hope this answers your doubt.

Simple secure WCF config for single client, single server

I'm looking to configure wcf to transport data from one web server to another web server with exactly one service host and exactly one client.
Is there a simple security configuration available that does not require x509 certificates?
Additional info:
I may be looking for a simple configuration (message is okay) that could use a predetermined username / pw / enc, etc. I'd also like to avoid sending a password in cleartext.
If by "simple security configuration" you mean encrypting the transmissions between the end points, there's no simple, easy way without using x509 certificates, short of creating some kind of elaborate VPN connection point to point.
But using certificates with WCF doesn't have to be painful or expensive. Using message-level encryption (xml based) is easy enough to configure and get running, and since the communication is always between points "A" and "B", the obvious problems associate with using message encryption (distributing the certificates) isn't a problem at all.
The steps would be:
-Generate a self-signed x509 cert with public and private keys and copy to both servers
-Configure your clients and host to use message security
-install certs on both servers (plenty of documentation available, like this one)
-Configure your host and clients to find the certificates during startup
-run and test
After you've got everything running, you'd obviously replace your self-signed cert with a commercial version.
You didn't mention your platform. Are you on Windows? If so, you can use Windows credentials with message-level encryption and no need for certificates. Here is a step by step guide on how to do it.. Hope this helps!

JDBC over SSL to a Cache database

I'm pretty far out of my depth here, so bear with me. We're using JDBC via com.intersys.jdbc.cachedriver to run stored procedures in Intersystems Cache and get the results in Java. However, there are other clients that connect directly to the Cache using a terminal over telnet. We have to lock down Cache's telnet port so that only telnet over SSL is possible. However, the Cache experts here say that locking down one port in Cache locks them all down, so the Java to Cache connection will also have to use SSL. I understand vaguely that some JDBC drivers support SSL, but I don't see that the Cache one does. What I need to know is:
What's needed to configure SSL for the JDBC connections? (We're using JBoss 4.2.3)
What about certificates? I assume those have to go somewhere.
Is it actually true that locking down the telnet connections is also going lock down JDBC in the same way?
Configuring Java Clients to Use SSL/TLS with Caché
Using SSL/TLS with Caché
Telnet vs ssh is a question about what the OS allows and only relates to Cache peripherally. It doesn't mean anything regarding items 1 or 2. So in answer to the direct question you are asking, "No".
1. What's needed to configure SSL for the JDBC connections? (We're using JBoss 4.2.3)
See http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20102/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=GCAS_ssltls#GCAS_ssltls_javacli for details. This section doesn't explicitly mention JDBC, but it's true for JDBC (and the reference has been added for the documentation 2011.1 [next release] .)
2. What about certificates? I assume those have to go somewhere.
To quote the documentation: "If the client has a private key and certificate, these are stored in the client’s keystore; the keystore can also hold the client’s root CA certificate and any intermediate CA certificates. To authenticate the server, the client may need to have the root CA certificate for the server and any intermediate CA certificates, these can be stored either in the client’s truststore or along with client certificate information in the keystore. For more information on keystores and truststores, see the section “Keystores and Truststores” in the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) Reference Guide."
3. Is it actually true that locking down the telnet connections is also going lock down JDBC in the same way?
Yes -- if telnet connections are to require TLS, then the superserver TLS setting needs to be Required, which means that you have to use TLS for anything that goes through the superserver (including JDBC). If you just want to allow the use of TLS for telnet connections, set the TLS value to Enabled, which allows non-TLS connections by other means (such as JDBC).

SSL without HTTP

All,
It is possible to use IIS (or similar) to handle the ssl side of https communications. Is there something similar that can handle the ssl side of a TCP/IP message?
Basically I have a client device sending a non-http message over a TCP connection and want a server that can handle the crypto and certificate side of SSL for me and forward the plain text on to another server.
The openSSL s_server command seems correct but the documentation states "It's intended for testing purposes only" while I need something robust. Is the documentation out of date?
Thanks,
Patrick
You are after the stunnel program:
Stunnel is a program that allows you to encrypt arbitrary TCP connections inside SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) available on both Unix and Windows. Stunnel can allow you to secure non-SSL aware daemons and protocols (like POP, IMAP, LDAP, etc) by having Stunnel provide the encryption, requiring no changes to the daemon's code.
I don't think the documentation is out of date. "For testing purposes only" is their release from liability.
It sounds like you want an SSL tunnel. You could setup a tunnel to the SSL server, send the packets through the tunnel, and then have that server forward the result on. There are lots of tutorials on using SSH to setup tunnels over SSL.