Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4
This documented is intended to get you started, and get a few things working. You are strongly encouraged to read the rest of the SSL documentation, and arrive at a deeper understanding of the material, before progressing to the advanced techniques.
Your SSL configuration will need to contain, at minimum, the following directives.
LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so Listen 443 <VirtualHost *:443> ServerName www.example.com SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /path/to/www.example.com.cert SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/www.example.com.key </VirtualHost>
The following enables only the strongest ciphers:
SSLCipherSuite HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5
While with the following configuration you specify a preference for specific speed-optimized ciphers (which will be selected by mod_ssl, provided that they are supported by the client):
SSLCipherSuite RC4-SHA:AES128-SHA:HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 SSLHonorCipherOrder on
Obviously, a server-wide SSLCipherSuite
which restricts
ciphers to the strong variants, isn't the answer here. However,
mod_ssl
can be reconfigured within Location
blocks, to give a per-directory solution, and can automatically force
a renegotiation of the SSL parameters to meet the new configuration.
This can be done as follows:
# be liberal in general SSLCipherSuite ALL:!aNULL:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+EXP:+eNULL <Location /strong/area> # but https://hostname/strong/area/ and below # requires strong ciphers SSLCipherSuite HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 </Location>
When you know all of your users (eg, as is often the case on a corporate
Intranet), you can require plain certificate authentication. All you
need to do is to create client certificates signed by your own CA
certificate (ca.crt
) and then verify the clients against this
certificate.
# require a client certificate which has to be directly # signed by our CA certificate in ca.crt SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 1 SSLCACertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/ca.crt
To force clients to authenticate using certificates for a particular URL,
you can use the per-directory reconfiguration features of
mod_ssl
:
SSLVerifyClient none SSLCACertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/ca.crt <Location /secure/area> SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 1 </Location>
The key to doing this is checking that part of the client certificate
matches what you expect. Usually this means checking all or part of the
Distinguished Name (DN), to see if it contains some known string.
There are two ways to do this, using either mod_auth_basic
or
SSLRequire
.
The mod_auth_basic
method is generally required when
the certificates are completely arbitrary, or when their DNs have
no common fields (usually the organisation, etc.). In this case,
you should establish a password database containing all
clients allowed, as follows:
SSLVerifyClient none SSLCACertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/ca.crt SSLCACertificatePath conf/ssl.crt <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/secure/area> SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 5 SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth SSLRequireSSL AuthName "Snake Oil Authentication" AuthType Basic AuthBasicProvider file AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.passwd Require valid-user </Directory>
The password used in this example is the DES encrypted string "password".
See the SSLOptions
docs for more
information.
/C=DE/L=Munich/O=Snake Oil, Ltd./OU=Staff/CN=Foo:xxj31ZMTZzkVA /C=US/L=S.F./O=Snake Oil, Ltd./OU=CA/CN=Bar:xxj31ZMTZzkVA /C=US/L=L.A./O=Snake Oil, Ltd./OU=Dev/CN=Quux:xxj31ZMTZzkVA
When your clients are all part of a common hierarchy, which is encoded
into the DN, you can match them more easily using SSLRequire
, as follows:
SSLVerifyClient none SSLCACertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/ca.crt SSLCACertificatePath conf/ssl.crt <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/secure/area> SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 5 SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth SSLRequireSSL SSLRequire %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \ and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} </Directory>
These examples presume that clients on the Intranet have IPs in the range
192.168.1.0/24, and that the part of the Intranet website you want to allow
internet access to is /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/subarea
.
This configuration should remain outside of your HTTPS virtual host, so
that it applies to both HTTPS and HTTP.
SSLCACertificateFile conf/ssl.crt/company-ca.crt <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs> # Outside the subarea only Intranet access is granted Require ip 192.168.1.0/24 </Directory> <Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/subarea> # Inside the subarea any Intranet access is allowed # but from the Internet only HTTPS + Strong-Cipher + Password # or the alternative HTTPS + Strong-Cipher + Client-Certificate # If HTTPS is used, make sure a strong cipher is used. # Additionally allow client certs as alternative to basic auth. SSLVerifyClient optional SSLVerifyDepth 1 SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +StrictRequire SSLRequire %{SSL_CIPHER_USEKEYSIZE} >= 128 # Force clients from the Internet to use HTTPS RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^192\.168\.1\.[0-9]+$ RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on RewriteRule . - [F] # Allow Network Access and/or Basic Auth Satisfy any # Network Access Control Require ip 192.168.1.0/24 # HTTP Basic Authentication AuthType basic AuthName "Protected Intranet Area" AuthBasicProvider file AuthUserFile conf/protected.passwd Require valid-user </Directory>