Disable hostname verification

[Michi]

Hi,

I have written a small HTTPS test server and client and now I try to disable hostname verification. Here is the code:

object HttpsServer extends App {

  implicit val system = ActorSystem("system")
  implicit val mat = ActorMaterializer()
  implicit val ec = system.dispatcher

  val serverContext: HttpsContext = {
    val password = "123456789".toCharArray
    val context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS")
    val ks = KeyStore.getInstance("PKCS12")
    val is = getClass.getResource("mykeystore.pkcs12").openStream()
    ks.load(is, password)
    val keyManagerFactory = KeyManagerFactory.getInstance("SunX509")
    keyManagerFactory.init(ks, password)
    context.init(keyManagerFactory.getKeyManagers, null, new SecureRandom)
    // start up the web server
    HttpsContext(context)
  }

  // credentials used to authenticate users
  val credentials = Map("test" -> ("test", Set("user")))

  // authenticator used to authenticate users, uses credentials
  def authenticator[T](cred: Credentials) : Option[Set[String]] =
    cred match {
      case cred@Credentials.Provided(name) =>
        credentials.get(name).flatMap {
          case (pass, roles) =>
            if(cred.verify(pass))
              Some(roles)
            else
              None
        }
      case Credentials.Missing =>
        None
    }

  val route = authenticateBasic("HTTP test server", authenticator) { roles ⇒
    get {
      path ("test.txt") {
        complete ("Hello, World")
      }
    }
  }

  val binding = Http(system).bindAndHandle(
    interface = "0.0.0.0",
    port = 6443,
    handler = route,
    httpsContext = Some(serverContext)
  )

  binding onFailure {
    case ex: Exception => println("Failed to bind to port 8888, reason {}", ex)
  }
}

object ConnectionLevelHttpsClient extends App {

  val config = ConfigFactory.parseURL(getClass.getResource("httpsclient.conf"))

  implicit val system = ActorSystem("ConnectionLevelHttpsClient", config)
  implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()
  implicit val ec = system.dispatcher

  val auth = Authorization(BasicHttpCredentials("test", "test"))

  private val trustfulSslContext: SSLContext = {

    object NoCheckX509TrustManager extends X509TrustManager {
      override def checkClientTrusted(chain: Array[X509Certificate], authType: String) = ()
      override def checkServerTrusted(chain: Array[X509Certificate], authType: String) = ()
      override def getAcceptedIssuers = Array[X509Certificate]()
    }

    val context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS")
    context.init(Array[KeyManager](), Array(NoCheckX509TrustManager), null)
    context
  }

  val trustfulClientContext: HttpsContext =
    HttpsContext(trustfulSslContext)

  val allHostsValid = new HostnameVerifier() {
    override def verify(s: String, sslSession: SSLSession): Boolean = true
  }
  HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(allHostsValid)


  val connectionFlow: Flow[HttpRequest, HttpResponse, Future[Http.OutgoingConnection]] =
    Http().outgoingConnectionTls("localhost", 6443, httpsContext = Some(trustfulClientContext))
  val responseFuture: Future[String] =
    Source.single(HttpRequest(uri = "/test.txt", headers = List(auth)))
      .via(connectionFlow)
      .runWith(Sink.head).flatMap { response =>
      if (response.status == StatusCodes.OK) {
        Unmarshal(response).to[String]
      } else {
        Future.successful("Error: " + response.status)
      }
    }
  responseFuture.onSuccess {
    case result => println(result)
  }
  responseFuture.onFailure {
    case ex => ex.printStackTrace()
  }
}

The whole project is here: https://github.com/mthaler/akka-http-test

The server is using a self-signed certificate and the client ignores the certificate. The code works, but when I change 

Http().outgoingConnectionTls("localhost", 6443, httpsContext = Some(trustfulClientContext))

to 

Http().outgoingConnectionTls("127.0.0.1", 6443, httpsContext = Some(trustfulClientContext))


I get an error:

akka.stream.ConnectionException: Hostname verification failed! Expected session to be for 127.0.0.1

I tried to disable hostname verification by setting an all-trusing hostname verifier and also by including

akka.ssl-config.ssl.loose.acceptAnyCertificate=true
akka.ssl-config.loose.disableHostnameVerification = true 
akka.ssl-config.ssl.loose.disableHostnameVerification = true


ssl-config.ssl.loose.acceptAnyCertificate=true
ssl-config.loose.disableHostnameVerification = true
ssl-config.ssl.loose.disableHostnameVerification = true


in httpsclient.conf. I also tried to remove my custom HttpsContext. But nothing seems to work. I am using Java 7 and akka-http 2.0.3.
How can I disable hostname verification?

(I know it is not good practice to trust all certificates and disable hostname verification.)

Best regards,
Michael

[Konrad Malawski]

Hi,

Have you tried setting akka.ssl-config.hostnameVerifierClass to your custom "accept everything" classname?

-- 

Cheers,

Konrad 'ktoso’ Malawski
Akka @ Typesafe

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[Michi]

Hi Konrad,

thanks for the quick reply, that works! Out of curiosity: is there a way to do this on a per connection basis?

Best regards,
Michael

[Konrad Malawski]

Currently there isn't a way to do this per connection.

In general we'd prefer to not make disabling these kinds of checks actually, but I know that's not a very popular statement.

Could you open a ticket or submit a PR that documents how to do this using the current scheme?

Thanks a lot in advance.

-- 

Cheers,

Konrad 'ktoso’ Malawski
Akka @ Typesafe

[Endre Varga]

Cannot the self-signed certs be added to the truststore though? That would be the "proper" workaround.

-Endre

[Konrad Malawski]

Yeah, I guess you're right that we should document that instead.

We talked with Will that in ssl-config we'll want to remove all the "loose" settings (including disabling this check), so documenting with that in mind probably makes more thanks.

-- 

Cheers,

Konrad 'ktoso’ Malawski
Akka @ Typesafe

[Michi]

I documented it here: https://github.com/mthaler/akka-http-test/

I can open a ticket later. What is a PR?

I think it would be useful for test-code to keep the option to disable certificate / hostname validation. For tests that only run on localhost security is not an issue at all. Running tests on different computers might cause problems if certificate / hostname verification is enabled.

I guess you can work around some of these problems e.g. by creating your own CA and using that for signing certificates but that seems overkill to me.

Best regards,
Michael

[Endre Varga]

The issue with security is always that if you make something convenient, even for testing, then somehow it ends up in production :(

-Endre

[Roland Kuhn]

Hi Michael,

19 feb 2016 kl. 17:33 skrev Michi <michael...@physik.tu-muenchen.de>:

I documented it here: https://github.com/mthaler/akka-http-test/

I can open a ticket later. What is a PR?

I think it would be useful for test-code to keep the option to disable certificate / hostname validation. For tests that only run on localhost security is not an issue at all. Running tests on different computers might cause problems if certificate / hostname verification is enabled.

I guess you can work around some of these problems e.g. by creating your own CA and using that for signing certificates but that seems overkill to me.

I don’t agree: if you write a program that shall have certain security characteristics, then you must certainly test it under the same constraints that you will run it with in production. Otherwise you run something that you have not tested. How would you test the failure scenarios where precisely these hostname checks fail? This should be handled (and probably reported) properly.

Therefore I don’t see the private CA as a workaround, I see it as a necessity so that security is practiced by everyone involved.

Regards,

Roland

Dr. Roland Kuhn
Akka Tech Lead
Typesafe – Reactive apps on the JVM.
twitter: @rolandkuhn

[Michi]

Hi Roland,

 

I don’t agree: if you write a program that shall have certain security characteristics, then you must certainly test it under the same constraints that you will run it with in production. Otherwise you run something that you have not tested. How would you test the failure scenarios where precisely these hostname checks fail? This should be handled (and probably reported) properly.

Therefore I don’t see the private CA as a workaround, I see it as a necessity so that security is practiced by everyone involved.

 

I have to admit my knowledge about SSL/TLS is very limited. But if hostname verification is causing trouble in our production code, I would not hesitate to switch it off for production code. Our code is used in an intranet, anyway and I am really not worried about man-in-the-middle attacks.

The obvious question is, why use https at all? I wouldn't, but the software we connect to is https only, so we have to live with it. This might be an exception and I guess we can get everything working with hostname verification (or maybe it just works, I did not try it yet). I am just not eager to spend lots of time to get security right if security is basically irrelevant, anyway.

Best regards,
Michael

[Akka Team]

Hi Michael,

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Michi <michael...@physik.tu-muenchen.de> wrote:

Hi Roland,

 

I don’t agree: if you write a program that shall have certain security characteristics, then you must certainly test it under the same constraints that you will run it with in production. Otherwise you run something that you have not tested. How would you test the failure scenarios where precisely these hostname checks fail? This should be handled (and probably reported) properly.

Therefore I don’t see the private CA as a workaround, I see it as a necessity so that security is practiced by everyone involved.

 

I have to admit my knowledge about SSL/TLS is very limited. But if hostname verification is causing trouble in our production code, I would not hesitate to switch it off for production code. Our code is used in an intranet, anyway and I am really not worried about man-in-the-middle attacks.

In this case the proper solution is to add the certificate of that service to a truststore. Then the truststore can be relatively easily installed on the client machines, i.e. you need to do this once.

 

The obvious question is, why use https at all? I wouldn't, but the software we connect to is https only, so we have to live with it. This might be an exception and I guess we can get everything working with hostname verification (or maybe it just works, I did not try it yet). I am just not eager to spend lots of time to get security right if security is basically irrelevant, anyway.

This is a very specific use case though.

-Endre

Best regards,
Michael

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Akka Team

Typesafe - Reactive apps on the JVM

Blog: letitcrash.com
Twitter: @akkateam

[rdineshf...@gmail.com]

Hi Team,

How do we disable Host verification using Akka http? Getting below exception.

akka.stream.ConnectionException: Hostname verification failed!

Code:

http.setDefaultClientHttpsContext(HttpsConnectionContext.https(context));

conSecure = ConnectHttp.toHostHttps(properties.getHost(), properties.getPort());
cstage = Source.single(hrequest)
      .via(http
            .outgoingConnection(conSecure)
      )
      .runWith(Sink.<HttpResponse>head(), materializer)
;

return cstage;

[Konrad Malawski]

Read the docs: 

http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/scala/http/client-side/https-support.html#Hostname_verification

You should also force the SSL Config library to be 0.2.2

-- 
Konrad `ktoso` Malawski
Akka @ Lightbend

[rdineshf...@gmail.com]

Got it thanks!

[Kenny Karosy]

I have a single use case where I'm calling Http().singleRequest and I'd like to disable the host verification.  I've tried:

val badSslConfig: AkkaSSLConfig = AkkaSSLConfig().mapSettings(s => s.withLoose(s.loose.withDisableSNI(true)))
val badCtx: HttpsConnectionContext = Http().createClientHttpsContext(badSslConfig)
Http().singleRequest(HttpRequest(... , connectionContext = badCtx)

Is there more needed?