How to make client accept the server SSL certificate - rest

Question

I am trying to make REST calls to server from a client.
Server Side
I am using Flask as web server. I have generated the certificate(cert.pem) and public key(key.pem) using the following command.
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem -days 365
Following is the server side code.
from flask import Flask
from flask_restful import Resource, Api
app = Flask(__name__)
api = Api(app)
class HelloWorld(Resource):
def get(self):
return {'hello': 'world'}
#app.route('/someroute/<arg1>,<arg2>', methods=['GET'])
def fn1(arg1,arg2):
res = fn2(arg1, arg2)
return str(res)
def fn2(un,pwd):
#Do something and return a number
return num
if __name__ == '__main__':
context = ('cert.pem', 'key.pem')
app.run(host="ip", port=port1, debug=True, ssl_context=context)
Client Side
I have a flask application from which I need to make REST calls to the above server. Following is the code I am using to do so.
import requests
# Below is the part of a function which gets called upon hitting a route in Flask.
ret = requests.get("https://<ip>:<port1>/<someroute>/arg1,arg2", verify=True)
print ret.text
This is throwing the following error.
requests.exceptions.SSLError: [Errno 1] _ssl.c:510: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
This error is expected as the certificate is not known to the client. Everything is working perfectly fine if I skip the certificate verification (verify=False).
How do I make the client trust this unknown server SSL certificate? I have seen solutions where I need to use Nginx on the client side. Can we not do some changes on flask(client side) itself to make it trust my server? If yes, what is that exact change I should be making in Flask? Also, suggest if urllib is better than requests.
UPDATE 1
I have another query here. From above, I understood that requests.get verifies the certificate every time we make a REST call (Please correct me if I am wrong). But, this looks like an extra load. Can we not have an encrypted connected established in the beginning and exchange the data by encrypting it with a private key? So, how to implement the beginning part - Send private key by encrypting it with the public key to the server and then start exchanging data by encrypting the data with the private key.

Answer 1

OC (original comment):
Server Side
I am using Flask as web server. I have generated the certificate(cert.pem) and public key(key.pem) using the following command.
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem -days 36
If you read man req it says,
-out filename
This specifies the output filename to write to or standard output by default.
-keyout filename
This gives the filename to write the newly created private key to. If this option is not specified then the filename present in the configuration file is used.
Here, cert.pem could be referred to as the public certificate and key.pem really is your private key (Keep it safe and well, private). FTFY.
OC (original comment):
This error is expected as the certificate is not known to the client. Everything is working perfectly fine if I skip the certificate verification (verify=False).
How do I make the client trust this unknown server SSL certificate? I have seen solutions where I need to use Nginx on the client side. Can we not do some changes on flask(client side) itself to make it trust my server? If yes, what is that exact change I should be making in Flask? Also, suggest if urllib is better than requests.
I'll answer this backwards, but first a little background. I found these links really useful to understand - on a high level - how the SSL/TLS handshake happens and how authentication is carried out
IBM: An overview of the SSL or TLS handshake
IBM: How SSL and TLS provide authentication
Now, coming back to your question,
requests > urllib (Personal opinion, but requests does have a good support and is mature - not implying that urllib isn't)
It looks like you want to do server authentication only, for that your client needs the server's public certificate. From How SSL and TLS provide authentication:
The certificates required are as follows, where CA X issues the certificate to the SSL or TLS client, and CA Y issues the certificate to the SSL or TLS server:
For server authentication only, the SSL or TLS server needs:
The personal certificate issued to the server by CA Y
The server's private key
and the SSL or TLS client needs:
The CA certificate for CA Y
Use it in requests.get referring this from requests, which says,
You can pass verify the path to a CA_BUNDLE file or directory with certificates of trusted CAs:
requests.get('https://github.com', verify='/path/to/certfile')
Once you do that and have good certificates, it should work.
NOTE: The openssl command in the OC does not show any subject for the key/cert pair, this would still fail cert verification, refer documentation that shows how to generate self-signed certs. There's a requirement to provide SANs (SubjectAltNames) so providing just a CommonName (CN) in the subject won't future proof your process.
EDIT:
The CA talk in the IBM document can be confusing, but since this is a self-signed cert, you don't have to worry about this, just think of it as your Flask server being the SSL/TLS server, and any client of that server can do server verification using server's public key.
OC (original comment):
From above, I understood that requests.get verifies the certificate every time we make a REST call (Please correct me if I am wrong). But, this looks like an extra load.
That's true. It would perform verification each time. To avoid that you can use requests.Session() as mentioned in requests SSL Cert Verification
OC (original comment):
Can we not have an encrypted connected established in the beginning and exchange the data by encrypting it with a private key? So, how to implement the beginning part - Send private key by encrypting it with the public key to the server and then start exchanging data by encrypting the data with the private key.
This is explained really well in the IBM docs listed