[Cialug] Apache - SSL Proxy - Name Based VirtualHost Problem

Claus cniesen at gmx.net
Fri Oct 19 16:11:27 CDT 2007


Great suggestion Chris.  It sounds like you identified the problem.  The 
ProxyPass directive takes the new specified server domain name and uses 
it in the host header.  Unfortunately I'm using Apache 1.3.29 and the 
ProxyPreserveHost directive isn't part of Apache until 2.0.31. It's the 
default with the OpenBSD default install and so far I have tried to stay 
with that. :(

Rethinking the whole issue I probably just use the RewriteRule of port 
80 and let the clients connect directly to port 8030 of the final Apache 
server.

Advantages:
  - each domain can have their individual certificate

Disadvantages:
  - need to update firewall rules
  - client can't easily use https:// address.

I really thought the proxy would be a neat solution.  Does anybody use 
proxy in such a way?  Should I continue considering it and if so are 
there other (asides Apache 2.0) that I should consider?

   Claus

On 10/19/2007 3:27 PM, chris wrote:
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> 
> On quick glance I'd say you're loosing your host header.  Try adding in
> a "ProxyPreserveHost On" in the Main Proxy and in the Second Proxy as
> well.
> 
> The default vhost is always the first defined vhost, so in named based
> hosting if nothing matches, you get the the first one apache found when
> parsing the config.
> 
> BTW, what you are doing we call real privilege separation.  Rici Lake
> recently wrote a nice howto on it here:
> http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/DifferentUserIDsUsingReverseProxy
> 
> You might find some useful stuff in it.
> 
> cheers!
> 
> chris at ia.gov
> 
> 
> Claus wrote:
>> I'm virtualizing the Apache servers, so each server is chrooted to their
>> directory and PHP scripts from one server can't access the other
>> servers.  So, on the server I'm running one main Apache instance that
>> listens to the publicly accessible port 80.  The other Apache instances
>> listen to local host only on their respective port (eg. 8010, 8020).  To
>> do this, and it does work, I use the following directives for the main
>> (proxy) Apache instance:
>>
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:8010/>
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:80>
>>   ServerName host1.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:8010/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8010/
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:8020/>
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:80>
>>   ServerName host2.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:8020/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8020/
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>>
>> The next step was to add an SSL host, which successfully worked by
>> adding these directives:
>>
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:8030/>
>>   SSLRequireSSL
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:80>
>>   ServerName sslhost3.example.com
>>   RewriteEngine on
>>   RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://sslhost3.example.com/$1 [L,R]
>> </VirtualHost>
>> <VirtualHost *:443>
>>   SSLEngine on
>>   ServerName sslhost3.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:8030/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8030/
>>   SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:
>>     +MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
>>   SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/example.com.crt
>>   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key
>>   SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive
>>      ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>>
>> Now I want to add another SSL host.  I know that each SSL host needs to
>> have their unique IP and port pair.  This is due to the fact that SSL
>> encryption needs to happen before the hostname is disclosed to the
>> server.  That's why name based virtual hosting doesn't work.
>> However, with proxy I thought I could do the following:
>>
>> 1. Main Proxy Server
>>   Accepts connection on port 80 and 443.  Forwards proxies port 80 as
>> usual but forwards port 443 to second proxy server in clear text.
>>
>> 2. Second Proxy Server
>>   Now that the incoming traffic is not encrypted the name based
>> VirtualHost directive should work.
>>
>> So I invisioned the directives to be:
>>
>> <VirtualHost *:80>
>>   ServerName sslhost3.example.com
>>   RewriteEngine on
>>   RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://sslhost3.example.com/$1 [L,R]
>> </VirtualHost>
>> <VirtualHost *:80>
>>   ServerName sslhost4.example.com
>>   RewriteEngine on
>>   RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://sslhost4.example.com/$1 [L,R]
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>> # Main Proxy Server
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:44344/>
>>   SSLRequireSSL
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:443>
>>   SSLEngine on
>>   ServerName sslhost3.example.com
>>   ServerAlias sslhost4.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:44344/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:44344/
>>   SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:
>>     +MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
>>   SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/example.com.crt
>>   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key
>>   SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive
>>      ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>> # Second Proxy Server
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:8030/>
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:44344>
>>   SSLEngine on
>>   ServerName sslhost3.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:8030/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8030/
>>   SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:
>>     +MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
>>   SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/example.com.crt
>>   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key
>>   SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive
>>      ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>> <Directory proxy:http://localhost:8040/>
>>   Order deny,allow
>>   Allow from all
>> </Directory>
>> <VirtualHost *:44344>
>>   SSLEngine on
>>   ServerName sslhost4.example.com
>>   ProxyPass / http://localhost:8040/
>>   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8040/
>>   SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:
>>     +MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
>>   SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/example.com.crt
>>   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key
>>   SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive
>>      ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
>> </VirtualHost>
>>
>> So far I haven't gotten this to work.  Whatever I do it seems to pick
>> the first VirtualHost listed, seemingly ignoring the ServerName.  At the
>> point of processing the port 44344 request no encryption should hinder
>> the name based VirtualHost resolution, right?  Is there anything I'm
>> overlooking?
>>
>>   Claus
>>
>> PS:  I'm aware about mismatch between the SSL certificate and the domain
>> names.  At this point I'm not concerned about it.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Cialug mailing list
>> Cialug at cialug.org
>> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
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