I want to write a small back-end REST server using Play! Framework 2.1.3. This server will only serve WS requests, and all communication to it must be made over SSL. For this reason, I don't want to have an HTTP port open for this server at all.
I've seen this question regarding SSL on various Play! branches, and according to the linked discussion, the only way to open SSL port (which worked for me) is to add JAVA_OPTS before running the server, like so:
JAVA_OPTS=-Dhttps.port=9443 play run
This setting opens both HTTP and HTTPS ports for communication.
My questions are:
Is it possible to open the server only for SSL communication? How?
Is there a configuration file where I put this setting?
Thanks!
This is super easy with Play 2.2, not sure it works on 2.1.3, I didn't see it in the 2.1.x docs...but was in the 2.2.x docs...so give it a shot, it might be implemented.
Throw this in your configuration file :
http.port=disabled
Or you could run it with the command line option :
-Dhttp.port=disabled
http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.2.x/ConfiguringHttps
Related
I'm using the preview tooling for ASP.NET Core and VS 2015 that was released in Dec timeframe.
I've followed numerous online examples with how to enable SSL in Kestrel. None of them worked.
So I tried an option in project called "Enable SSL" and it seems to set a port for me, and works from local host, but doesn't seem to work from elsewhere.
I've also tried .UseKestrel() I have option.UseHttps("ssl.pfx", "password")
Below that I have UseUrls, but it doesn't seem to bind correctly to the ports because my SSL requests. When I try to issue SSL requests it times out. I used netstat and it seems like there is no port opened for my specified SSL port.
1) How do I use UseUrls? I need both localhost and remote machine access
2) How do I configure IIS express to allow the https calls?
If anyone has a good reliable way to set this up for VS 2015 in an ASP.NET Core project I would really appreciate it!
Thanks,
James
You're not saying what you have tried so far, so maybe you've tried that already, but you need to:
have a valid certificate that your server will be able to provide to the client
install the nuget package: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.Https
change your configure sequence so that it uses Kestrel Https
app.UseKestrelHttps(certificate);
change the url Kestrel is listening to one starting by https://
I used this article a few months back on VS2015: https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/implement-ssl-kestrel-asp-net-core/
I worked fine for me, but maybe there are a few things to adapt with the latest version.
Quite often I have to access old sites using Sslv3 or other old, deprecated, SSL protocols.
Most of them are appliance that are not easy to update (storage controllers, tape controllers...).
Unluckily latest browsers on Linux (chrome and firefox) refuse to connect to this kind of sites, even with advanced options (SSLv3 support has been totally removed from Firefox).
What I need is a tool that can do such a thing:
tool --listen HTTPS:9050 --connect HTTPS://oldsite:443/
Obviously the "connect" part should accept any SSL version and the "listen" part should expose commonly accepted SSL versions.
I saw mitmtool and polipo but I could not configure them properly.
The key here is that the target site is not a proxy, but a simple https site.
Is it possible?
I would like to setup mod_security as a stand alone instance protecting Tomcat instances against web application attacks. Would anyone know the pros and cons of doing this via installing mod_security as an Apache module versus installing mod_security on a reverse proxy? Has anyone implemented mod_security in either of these fashions? And if so is one preferred over the other?
There's really no difference in your two options. What non reverse proxy would you install the module on to protect Tomcat?
The question doesn't really make sense as they are both the same to you.
If you already have an Apache server, then you install ModSecurity in one of two ways:
In embedded mode by installing ModSecurity as module in the existing Apache instance you already have. The advantages are that you won't have to set up a separate Apache instance, and that the ModSecurity will have access to the environment that Apache runs under (so can see environment variables for example or log to same log files).
In a reverse proxy mode. This involves setting up a separate Apache instance, with ModSecurity on it only, and funnel all requests through it, before sending on the requests to your normal Apache. The advantages here are a dedicated web server just for ModSecurity, so you will not share resources with your existing version of Apache, if it is already resource hungry. Disadvantages are that it doubles your infrastructure and the complications that brings.
Personally I prefer option 1.
However, as you want to set up a dedicated web server in front of TomCat, the two options are identical for you. The new instance of Apache (or Nginx) that you set up will be running it in embedded mode and will act as a reverse proxy to your Tomcat server.
Personally I always think it's best to run a dedicated web server like Apache in front of any app server like Tomcat - especially on a public facing website. Granted Tomcat does include a pretty good web server (called Coyote), which may serve most of your web server needs, but a dedicated web server like Apache is more geared towards serving static content and contains other features for performance and security which make it a better end point server (including the ability to run ModSecurity for example!).
And just in case there is any confusion, Apache is actually short for Apache HTTP Server, and is sometimes called Apache httpd after the process that it runs. It is Apache's most popular bit of software hence why the name gets shortened, but Apache actually have lots of bits of software (including Apache Tomcat - usually shortened just to Tomcat).
Doesn't have to be Apache, but that's just the only HTTP server I know of (Actually could you guys recommend alternatives that I could look into as well?)
Anyways, so I have been messing around with Amazon Web Services and I created an EC2 server instance with an Amazon Linux Image. On that, (Following guides and examples) I installed Apache and now when I make a GET request to my public IP, it returns to me the HTML files I created on my server.
My question is, what if I never installed Apache, and then made an HTTP request to my public IP? For no reason really, the question just came up in my head and I'm curious. I'd rather not figure out how to uninstall Apache or create a new instance to figure it out, so I was wondering if somebody could weigh in as well as tell me a little more about what it is exactly apache does on a server. My understanding is that it is a layer you can install on your server OS that will create a socket listener to port 80 (HTTP), and when a request is made on that port, Apache will return web pages? Also I think I read somewhere you could configure Apache to forward a port to something like a python server script?
Thanks in advance for your time!
could you guys recommend alternatives that I could look into as well?)
nginx is a popular alternative to apache. It's much more efficient.
what if I never installed Apache, and then made an HTTP request to my public IP?
Your browser would get a "connection reset" because there is nothing on port 80. Your browser would display a message (Chrome says "This webpage is not available"). You would NOT get a "404" because that requires an HTTP server to send HTTP codes.
If your server was firewalled instead, you'd bet a busy wait for a while, then a message about the server not responding.
Also I think I read somewhere you could configure Apache to forward a port to something like a python server script?
Yes, that is called "reverse proxy" mode. It's essential to any application website if you want to scale. The web server(s) can distribute traffic to one or more backends running the application. The web server is useful for filtering bad requests (since your backend in Ruby/Python will be 1000's of times slower than the reverse proxy.)
Well, if you want to test what will happen if Apache isn't installed, you can always just stop the Apache service by typing:
sudo service apache2 stop
or
sudo service httpd stop
depending on your version. Then if you visit your site's webpage you'll get a 404 error or something similar.
There are ways to use python scripts to run simple servers, but in general it's easier to just let Apache handle that and use a framework like Ruby on Rails or Django to control the display and creation of content for your server.
When one develops a self-hosted WCF http server,
one of the steps needed is to bind an SSL certificate to a port number:
httpcfg set ssl -i 0.0.0.0:8012 -h 0000000000003ed9cd0c315bbb6dc1c08da5e6
as stated in:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733791.aspx
However,
It is hardly expected that in my deployment environment one would be able to do it.
(I don't even know if the httpcfg.exe is redistributable)
Moreover, if the user changed the port after he installed the product then he will need to run the command again....
how can this step be automated pro grammatically?
preferably in C# but if it can only be done in C++ (direct access to the Http Server API)
then I will manage :)
Have a look here: an open source C# UI for configuring HTTP.SYS that directly drives the API. This should get you an idea of the code necessary for configuring the certs.
For those tuning in a couple of years later:
This article from Mike Bouck's RAM has a clean C# wrapper for the http.sys api.
Таке а look on https://github.com/segor/SslCertBinding.Net
It also has nuget available
Install-Package SslCertBinding.Net
and does what you need perfectly. Thanks to the author.