I have followed this tutorial (https://techexpert.tips/nginx/nginx-kerberos-authentication/) to creates a "special page" /test on my NGINX server that requires successful Kerberos authentication to access it. So this much works. The problem is, I want the application to know who actually just successfully authenticated to the site so I can show them their specific information. So, for example, instead of popping up a page that says this to everyone:
Nginx authentication test
I want to have a page that will add the authenticated Kerberos username to the output or issue a cookie with the authenticated username in it. This needs to support multiple, simultaneous users accessing the website so each will have access to their own information.
I should add that when I tailf the /var/log/nginx/access.log, I see a line that gets spit out with two dashes and what appears to be browser information from the browser accessing the site. Then after successful Kerberos authentication, another line gets spit out to that log that has what appears to be the username filled in for the second dash. So it seems like this information is available somewhere in nginx if I could only get access to it. I don't really want to grab it from the access.log file. ;-)
All Nginx auth modules (whether Basic, or PAM, or SPNEGO for Kerberos) behave the same way – Nginx puts the username in $remote_user when processing nginx.conf, which then uses 'fastcgi_param' or 'uwsgi_param' to propagate it to the REMOTE_USER FCGI or WSGI variable.
So if you're using PHP via FastCGI, I'd expect to find it in $_SERVER["REMOTE_USER"], while Python using Flask would have request.environ["REMOTE_USER"], and so on.
On the other hand, if Nginx talks to the webapp via HTTP (using 'proxy_pass'), you should be able to use 'proxy_set_header' to send $remote_user through (for example) X-Remote-User or another custom HTTP header – although you'd better make very sure that nobody but Nginx is allowed to talk to the webapp backend, otherwise they could spoof the header and walk right in.
Related
My websites are static. I am looking for a method to protect the CGI form, without using "Captcha". Further, I do not wish to relay on referer because that may be vague and incorrect.
Is there any method that I can allow the access to CGI only and provided that browser already accessed a page on the same server?
That implies that Nginx should hopefully be able to keep track if the client was already on the page.
I have a Comodo SSL certificate on my host plan, however when accesing my site from google, it sends me automatically to
http://example.com, Where the green lock doesn't appear.
If I manually add "https", like: https://example.com it does show up!
Is there a way to access my website always with the green lock showing up? instead of manually having to write it everytime?
You can easily redirect to the https version of any page using rewrite rules/rewrite module of your web server (the exact way to do this depends on the webserver used). Ask your provider, this is a common case so there may even be a UI option in your console to do this.
Regarding google see this: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/67212/how-to-convince-google-to-list-https-version-of-website
It may also be good form to verify the protocol used to access the site in your authentication module and refuse authentication if the wrong protocol is used. Assuming web rules are used to redirect traffic this would to prevent leaking information due to a misconfiguration/bug.
I have created a session management for my site. Site will authenticate using a service and the details will be maintained in a cookie. I am trying to access the services from my RESTful server but getting errors. I found its because the non-authentication of the request. I hope I should send my withCredentials:true along with the request. But when I use this withCredentials:true I am getting this error in the console.
Cannot use wildcard in Access-Control-Allow-Origin when credentials flag is true.
What is the problem?
Yes it is a CROS issue. If you are using CROS in your site, just don't use wild cards in access-control-allow-origin. You need to mention your inputs there. Only one site can be given permissions at a time. You can't give permissions to access with two or more domain names. If you want to do that, you need to add another way to server for that domain. May be with different requesting url or so.
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.
I would like to create web application with admin/checkout sections being secured. Assuming I have SSL set up for subdomain.mydomain.com I would like to make sure that all that top-secret stuff ;) like checkout pages and admin section is transferred securely. Would it be ok to structure my application as below?
subdomain.mydomain.com
adminSectionFolder
adminPage1.php
adminPage2.php
checkoutPagesFolder
checkoutPage1.php
checkoutPage2.php
checkoutPage3.php
homepage.php
loginPage.php
someOtherPage.php
someNonSecureFolder
nonSecurePage1.php
nonSecurePage2.php
nonSecurePage3.php
imagesFolder
image1.jpg
image2.jpg
image3.jpg
Users would access my web application via http as there is no need for SSL for homepage and similar. Checkout/admin pages would have to be accessed via https though (that I would ensure via .htaccess redirects). I would also like to have login form on every page of the site, including non-secure pages. Now my questions are:
if I have form on non-secure page e.g http://subdomain.mydomain.com/homepage.php and that form sends data to https://subdomain.mydomain.com/loginPage.php, is data being send encrypted as if it were sent from https://subdomain.mydomain.com/homepage.php? I do realize users will not see padlock, but browser still should encrypt it, is it right?
EDIT: my apologies.. above in bold I originally typed http but meant https, my bad
2.If on secure page loginPage.php (or any other accessed via https for that instance) I created session, session ID would be assigned, and in case of my web app. something like username of the logged in user. Would I be able to access these session variable from http://subdomain.mydomain.com/homepage.php to for example display greeting message? If session ID is stored in cookies then it would be trouble I assume, but could someone clarify how it should be done? It seems important to have username and password send over SSL.
3.Related to above question I think.. would it actually make any sense to have login secured via SSL so usenrame/password would be transferred securely, and then session ID being transferred with no SSL? I mean wouldnt it be the same really if someone caught username and password being transferred, or caught session ID? Please let me know if I make sense here cause it feels like I'm missing something important.
EDIT: I came up with idea but again please let me know if that would work. Having above, so assuming that sharing session between http and https is as secure as login in user via plain http (not https), I guess on all non secure pages, like homepage etc. I could check if user is already logged in, and if so from php redirect to https version of same page. So user fills in login form from homepage.php, over ssl details are send to backend so probably https://.../homepage.php. Trying to access http://.../someOtherPage.php script would always check if session is created and if so redirect user to https version of this page so https://.../someOtherPage.php. Would that work?
4.To avoid browser popping message "this page contains non secure items..." my links to css, images and all assets, e.g. in case of http://subdomain.mydomain.com/checkoutPage1.php should be absolute so "/images/image1.jpg" or relative so "../images/image1.jpg"? I guess one of those would have to work :)
wow that's long post, thanks for your patience if you got that far and any answers :) oh yeh and I use php/apache on shared hosting
If the SSL termination is on the webserver itself, then you'll probably need to configure seperate document roots for the secure and non-secure parts - while you could specify that these both reference the same physical directory, you're going to get tied in knots switching between the parts. Similarly if your SSL termination is before the webserver you've got no systematic separation of the secure and non-secure parts.
Its a lot tidier to separate out the secure and non-secure parts into seperate trees - note that if you have non-SSL content on a secure page, the users will get warning messages.
Regards your specific questions
NO - whether data is encrypted depends on where it is GOING TO, not where it is coming from
YES - but only if you DO NOT set the secure_only cookie flag - note that if you follow my recommendations above, you also need to ensure that the cookie path is set to '/'
the page which processes the username and password MUST be secure. If not then you are exposing your clients authentication details (most people use the same password for all the sites they visit) and anyone running a network sniffer or proxy would have access.
Your EDIT left me a bit confused. SSL is computationally expensive and slow - so you want to minimise its use - but you need to balance this with your users perception of security - don't keep switching from SSL to non-SSL, and although its perfectly secure for users to enter their details on a page served up by non-SSL which sends to a SSL page, the users may not understand this distinction.
See the first part of my answer above.
C.