I've implemented SSL on my site using SNI. Now I know that old browsers does not support SNI facility. What I'm asking is is it possible to redirect the user to some other landing page when he/she is trying to visit my site with a non SNI supported browser.
Please suggest me how can I implement it? I'm not able to find much heloful info about SNI based redirection. If there is some code snippet which you guys use to achive this, then please share it with me.
In short: yes, it is possible in theory, but probably not in any use case relevant in practice.
In detail:
HTTP redirection within a HTTPS connection is done after the TLS connection got established. That means, that you would first need to have a valid certificate which matches all the hosts you have on your site in order to establish the TLS connection. This is usually not the case if you are using SNI because if you have such certificate you would not need SNI at all.
Related
I've some discussion with my colleague whether we can make HTTPS connection without using SSL certificate. I'm quite confused about this. Can anyone explain this?
It's not possible to do HTTPS connections without SSL. The way it works is complicated and as mentioned in the comments there is a great answer here.
But to summarize the reason why it's not possible:
HTTPS needs an SSL certificate, you can think of SSL as the S in HTTPS, since the secure connection is made using the certificate. A client sends a request to a server, they do a secure handshake (which requires the certificate in order to create and verify the keys) and then proceed to business as usual.
Any browser will throw a million red flaws if you try to circumvent this behavior. You could trick your own server to believe data is coming as HTTPS rather than HTTP in some cases (if you have control over it), but you won't be able to fool browsers.
If a client is requesting a domain that does not have a valid CA signed certificate and the server not intend on supporting HTTPS but does support HTTP for this domain, what is the best way to handle this in the web server. Note, the server does handle requests for SSL (HTTPS) on other domains so it is listening on 443.
Example where this would apply is for multi sub-domains where the sub-domains are dynamically created and thus making it extremely difficult to register CA signed certificates.
I've seen people try to respond with HTTP error codes but these seem moot as the client (browser) will first verify the certificate and will present the hard warning to the user before processing any HTTP. Therefore the client will only see the error code if they "proceed" past the cert warning.
Is there a canonical way of handling this scenario?
There is no canonical way for this scenario. Clients don't automatically downgrade to HTTP if HTTPS is broken and it would be a very bad idea to change clients in this regard - all what an attacker would need to do to attack HTTPS would be to infer with the HTTPS traffic to make a client downgrade to unprotected HTTP traffic.
Thus, you need to make sure that the client either does not try to attempt to access URL's which do not work properly (i.e. don't publish such URL's) or to make sure that you have a working certificate for these subdomains, i.e. adapt the processes for creation of subdomains so that they not only have an IP address but also a valid certificate (maybe use wildcard certificates).
Considering these websites don't have to work with SSL, the webserver should close all SSL connections for them in a proper way.
There is no canonical way for this, but RFC 5246 implicitly suggests to interrupt the handshake on the server side by using the user_cancel + close_notify alerts. How to achieve this is another question, it will be a configuration of the default SSL virtual host.
user_canceled
This handshake is being canceled for some reason unrelated to a
protocol failure. If the user cancels an operation after the
handshake is complete, just closing the connection by sending a
close_notify is more appropriate. This alert should be followed
by a close_notify. This message is generally a warning.
If you are dealing with subdomains, you probably can use a wildcard certificate for all of your subdomains.
Adding the CA certificate to your client will remove the warning (that's what companies do, no worry).
When hosting with Apache, for example, you can use VirtualDocumentRoot to add domains without editing your configuration. Have a look at the solution provided here : Virtual Hosting in SSL with VirtualDocumentRoot
I have one wordpress website, in that am getting lot of errors day by day. So I like to change my normal HTTP to HTTPS. So please can you explain it is very useful and secure for my website.
If your website does not have https in the web link this means that you do not have installed SSL. Most of the modern web browsers treat any website without SSL installed as insecure. This may be one of the reasons for your website's issues.
I found the following answers to the question of the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.
Difference between HTTP and HTTPS
To know about the reasons for using SSL follow the link given below:
Reasons for using SSL
10,000ft view...
http is an unencrypted protocol for sending and retrieving data from servers in a web browser (among other uses). https is the same protocol but wrapper in SSL, a security tool that encrypts communications between the browser and server. This is what what banks and other websites use to ensure your data (like financial info) is protected when sent to your browser and cannot be read by someone on the same network.
Checkout articles like this and google the topic for more info.
Hope this helps.
we need to protect our webservices with SSL (https) or any other security mechanism. Our problem is that current clients (delphi exe's) have references to our http webservices fixed in code and can not change that code.
I've tried to implement URL redirection rule from http to https but that didn't work because of the "hand shake"...Changing client to use https reference did work but saddly we can not do that for every client.
I know this question is in contradiction with encription theories but i'll fire this question anyway if anyone has any type of suggestion/idea to at least make connection or data transfer more secured (either with or without SSL protocol) without changing client side.
Thanks,
Luke
You need some kind of transparent TCP tunneling software/hardware on the clients, so the encryption occurs without the delphi clients noticing it.
My Google search using "transparent encrypted tunneling" keywords got this vendor of such solutions. There's must other vendors with similar solutions.
This is really an networking question.
PS.: hardcoding the URL is the real problem here. After the tunneling palliative is done, change that because this really will cause more headaches in future.
The client will be connecting over a port (non SSL) that will need to remain. What you could possibly do is that if you allow access both http and https you could possibly only allow http from specific IP addresses if you know them? its still not secure, but least you know where the calls are coming from and can do something about that?
I am quite new to HTTPS and can not get my head around it.
Can someone suggest good starting point for learning about HTTPS, certificates and signing?
Possibly with a working example in ASP.NET with IIS.
If all you are trying to do is have your site in HTTPS there is no code needed. All you need to do is set IIS to serve pages with HTTPS.
If that is all you want, you are better off asking this question in http://www.serverfault.com.
To get you started, here's a link on how to set https in iis 7: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/144/how-to-setup-ssl-on-iis-70/
HTTPS is just normal HTTP traffic that is encrypted using SSL/TLS. The protocol is fairly straightforward. I wrote a detailed blow-by-blow of what happens at the start of a connection on my blog: The First First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection.
It's unfortunate that the APIs built on top of the protocol are often much more complicated.