I want to connect to my ejabberd server from another machine using a certificate instead of a login/password. I've looked for authentication client-to-server with a certificate for ejabberd, but i couldn't find something helpfull.
If anyone has any ideas how it cas be done, I'm taking..
As of version 16.02, ejabberd Community Server does not yet support client cert authentication.
However, if your questions is about communication encryption, you can indeed configure ejabberd with Starttls support to use TLS between client and server. A service like Let's encrypt can provide such certificates for free: https://letsencrypt.org/
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From my browser I want to communicate to localhost application using ssl. Here browser(which acts as client) will submit the certificate instead of localhost application(which acts as server). Can Ssl be established in this scenario? So finally it boils down to problem statement can a ssl communication be established by server validating the client certificate and client not validating the server certificate.
The SSL/TLS implementation inside the browser do not support this scenario. A server certificate is always required by the browser with SSL/TLS in order to be sure that the browser is communicating with the expected server (as specified in the URL) and not some man in the middle. Apart from that it is not clear what you want to achieve with such a setup in the first place - maybe there is a better design for your unknown use case.
I am using Ansible on a Linux computer connecting to a windows 8.1 embedded computer. It's able to connect with username and password over the HTTPS port 5986, but I need to specify the option:
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation=ignore
The ansible documentation specifies:
The following is necessary for Python 2.7.9+ (or any older Python that
has backported SSLContext, eg, Python 2.7.5 on RHEL7) when using
default WinRM self-signed certificates:
The windows computer has an SSL listener that was configured with Self-SignedCertificates from the powershell script:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/examples/scripts/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1
My question is that if I'm ignoring server cert validation, does that compromise the encryption that HTTPS is supposed to provide? or is server cert validation just a separate process of HTTPS?
Thanks
Yes, if you ignore certificate validation as recommended in the default Ansible config for WinRM, your connection is not secure - someone can spoof the target server using a man in the middle (MITM) attack on the HTTPS connection. (There should really be a security warning in the Ansible docs.)
The best alternative seems to be NTLM/Negotiate authentication, instead of HTTPS, removing the need for an SSL certificate. Your Ansible control machine will need to be able to authenticate over NTLM as a Windows user, just like using an SMB file share.
You will need pywinrm 0.2.0 or higher for NTLM/Negotiate support.
Useful links
Why NTLM/Negotiate for WinRM - background on why it's good to avoid the complex setup to install SSL certificates by using NTLM (Ruby based but still useful)
Example Ansible setup for NTLM
More complete Ansible setup including NTLM
Certificate validation is a separate process than encryption. The communication will be encrypted. You can read more on the issues with self-signed certificates but the high level is you remove any way for Ansible to validate who exactly is on the other side of the connection an open your self to a man in the middle attack that HTTPS usually protects you from.
I am creating an EWS service which will connect to the Exchange server 2007. I am using Autodiscover service of Exchange server.I need to understand following:
How can I validate the SSL/TSL certificates for my service.
I need to know conventional way how outlook communicate with Exchange server.
How to Detect the specific certificate is installed for authentication.
I had written the code to connect to the Exchange server.But I am facing issues with the Certificate part.I am totally confused with the proper handshake with help of certificate.
In my code I had used X509Store to get the certificate stores and then validate from the server,but the certificate may differ from server to server (Exchange).Is there any way around.
Currently I am using Net::LDAP::Server to setup my server but it is not secure enough.
Is there any module or method so that I can setup a LDAP server over TLS or other secure connection?
I just found many information about how to connect to a secure ldap server, but cant found how to setup a secure ldap server.
Can anyone give some advices?
How does an LDAPS connection work
LDAPS is an unofficial protocol. It is to LDAP what HTTPS is to HTTP, namely the exact same protocol (but in this case LDAPv2 or LDAPv3) running over a secured SSL ("Secure Socket Layer") connection to port 636 (by default).
Not all servers will be configured to listen for LDAPS connections, but if they do, it will commonly be on a different port from the normal plain text LDAP port.
Using LDAPS can potentially solve the vulnerabilities described above, but you should be aware that simply "using" SSL is not a magic bullet that automatically makes your system "secure".
First of all, LDAPS can solve the problem of verifying that you are connected to the correct server. When the client and server connect, they perform a special SSL 'handshake', part of which involves the server and client exchanging cryptographic keys, which are described using X.509 certificates. If the client wishes to confirm that it is connected to the correct server, all it needs to do is verify the server's certificate which is sent in the handshake. This is done in two ways:
check that the certificate is signed (trusted) by someone that you trust, and that the certificate hasn't been revoked. For instance, the server's certificate may have been signed by Verisign (www.verisign.com), and you decide that you want to trust Verisign to sign legitimate certificates.
check that the least-significant cn RDN in the server's certificate's DN is the fully-qualified hostname of the hostname that you connected to when creating the LDAPS object. For example if the server is , then the RDN to check is cn=ldap.example.com.
You can do this by using the cafile and capath options when creating a Net::LDAPS object, and by setting the verify option to 'require'.
To prevent hackers 'sniffing' passwords and other information on your connection, you also have to make sure the encryption algorithm used by the SSL connection is good enough. This is also something that gets decided by the SSL handshake - if the client and server cannot agree on an acceptable algorithm the connection is not made.
Net::LDAPS will by default use all the algorithms built into your copy of OpenSSL, except for ones considered to use "low" strength encryption, and those using export strength encryption. You can override this when you create the Net::LDAPS object using the 'ciphers' option.
Once you've made the secure connection, you should also check that the encryption algorithm that is actually being used is one that you find acceptable. Broken servers have been observed in the field which 'fail over' and give you an unencrypted connection, so you ought to check for that.
How does LDAP and TLS work
SSL is a good solution to many network security problems, but it is not a standard. The IETF corrected some defects in the SSL mechanism and published a standard called RFC 2246 which describes TLS ("Transport Layer Security"), which is simply a cleaned up and standardized version of SSL.
You can only use TLS with an LDAPv3 server. That is because the standard (RFC 2830) for LDAP and TLS requires that the normal LDAP connection (ie., on port 389) can be switched on demand from plain text into a TLS connection. The switching mechanism uses a special extended LDAP operation, and since these are not legal in LDAPv2, you can only switch to TLS on an LDAPv3 connection.
So the way you use TLS with LDAPv3 is that you create your normal LDAPv3 connection using Net::LDAP::new(), and then you perform the switch using Net::LDAP::start_tls(). The start_tls() method takes pretty much the same arguments as Net::LDAPS::new(), so check above for details.
Well, perhaps LDAPS is not an RFC but to say it is not a standard or secure is certainly a stretch.
LDAPS is supported by ALL LDAP Server Vendors.
LDAPS is at least as secure as HTTPS.
As with ALL SSL (or TLS) the security weak points are how the certificates are handled.
Certainly LDAPS is more supported by LDAP server vendors and clients than is TLS. Active Directory as one example, does not support TLS. Querying the rootDSE for the supportedExtention 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037 will (should) show if TLS is supported on any particular LDAP server.
We have some examples at:
http://ldapwiki.willeke.com/wiki/Perl%20LDAP%20Samples.
Am getting SSL error while connecting to remote exchange server.
Can any one help me.
Taking a completely random guess at this near-empty question, I'd say your exchange server is using a privately issued SSL certificate and the workstation that you are trying to connect to it from doesn't have the Root CA (it doesn't trust the remote SSL cert)
Try connecting with something like WFetch. This will help you get a meaningful response from Exchange when attempting to connect. Also i agree with x0n , it sounds like you are missing certificate which is required when connecting over SSL.