Hi all, I wanted to implement certificate pinning on an upstream SSL connection of a reverse proxy but I am struggling with the setup. Please let me know where I am going wrong or if the expected setup should work.
My setup is as follows: Multiple local applications ---HTTP via localhost ---> Apache httpd 2.2 as reverse proxy ------------------------- HTTPS via the internet ---------------> API Provider I am having a bunch of applications which all consume an API provided by a third party. Connection to the third party is accessible via https and mutual SSL. All local applications are running on the same server and we decided to bundle requests by using an apache reverse proxy which handles the SSL connections to the API Provider. By doing this the Proxy also reduced the number of SSL connections needed while at the same time reducing latency as connections are be reused. I am running an apache 2.2 on CentOS. Due to the fact that applications and proxy are living on the same host we decided to use only http via localhost. The API Provider is using a server certificate which is derived from a public CA. root CA => intermediate CA 1 => intermediate CA 2 => API Server Certificate. The setup is working in general but I wanted to ensure that I am understanding the way certificate chains are evaluated correctly as my understanding of the trust model is not working a expected. This where I hope you can help. According to my understanding I should be able to place the Server Certificate in a file referred to via SSLProxyCACertificateFile If I then set SSLProxyVerifyDepth to 0 only certificates included in the certificate file should be trusted. During tests this setup failed and I am getting an handshake failure. My assumption is that this is due to the fact that the server certificate is not selfsigned but derived from an intermediate CA. I got this to work by Adding all three CAs (root CA, intermediate CA 1 and intermediate CA 2) and setting SSLProxyVerifyDepth to 3 As soon as I started removing certificates from the top or reducing the verification level I was getting handshake errors stating either CA chain too long or CA not found. Could you advice on the best way to ensure only specific certificates (Signed by public CAs) rather than whole CAs can be trusted in outgoing SSL Connections from Appache 2.2 using the SSLProxyEngine Here is the config I am using: SSLProxyEngine on SSLProxyCACertificateFile trusted_CAs.pem # this includes the 3 CAs and I even tried including the 3 CAs and the server certificate. SSLProxyVerify require SSLProxyCheckPeerCN on SSLProxyVerifyDepth 3 ProxyPass / https://API-Server.X.Y/API-App Thanks Chris
