Subject: doubts with ssl

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 19:39:52 +0100

I have some doubts with ssl protocol. Actually We have apache-modssl with a 
test certificate. Now we would like one signed by a Certification Authority. 
First doubt is about Private Ip, we have only a Public Ip which is in a 
firewall and most of request ( http, https, ftp etc) are redirected to 
internal servers. Internal servers have only Private Ip. 

So my first question is, Could ssl works on a private IP? 

The second is about fqdn. Webserver has "servidorweb" as host name, and 
"servidorweb.mydomain.com" as fully qualified domain name. Anyway we have 
configured our dns to match www.mydomain.com with webserver´s IP. 

Second question is, Is necesary to change the host name of webserver from 
servidorweb to www? 

Thanks in advance. 
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---

From: "Boyle Owen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 09:07:23 +0200

>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
>
>First doubt is about Private Ip, we have only a Public Ip 
>which is in a firewall and most of request ( http, https, ftp etc) are
redirected to 
>So my first question is, Could ssl works on a private IP?

The firewall is not a problem - you only have to ensure that it is open
on port 443. The FW works at the TCP/IP layer and simply routes the
packets between the client and the server. If it also does Network
Address Translation (changing the IP address from public to private)
then that is not a problem either since this is an attribute of the
TCP/IP packet. The encryption is all at the HTTP layer which is *inside*
the TCP/IP packet.

Does the inside of the FW connect directly to the SSL-server? If so, no
problem. If it goes through a proxy, you need to ensure that the proxy
understands the CONNECT method. This means that the proxy will pass
packets blindly without trying to read them.

Just to be clear; SSL doesn't care about IP addresses - the
authentication phase is based on comparing the hostname in the request
with the common name in the certificate - read on...

>The second is about fqdn. Webserver has "servidorweb" as host 
>name, and "servidorweb.mydomain.com" as fully qualified domain name. 
>Anyway we have configured our dns to match www.mydomain.com with
webserver´s IP. 
>
>Second question is, Is necesary to change the host name of 
>webserver from servidorweb to www? 

The way it works is that when you buy the certificate, you define a
"common-name". This is like "www.myserver.com". When a user wants to
visit your site, he types in "www.myserver.com" into his browser. The
browser then requests the site and gets back the certificate. The
browser checks that the common-name in the cert matches the fqdn that
the user typed in. If yes, all is well and the SSL connection is
established. If not, the browser alerts the user because there is now a
possibility that the site is a fake since certificate doesn't match the
fqdn. This is the *authentication* phase of SSL (which is just as
important as the encryption phase).

To answer your question, you can use any name you like in the
certificate (i.e. the common-name) but you must make sure that the
browsercomes to your site with that name. This can be a problem if you
have a lot of aliases for the site (.net, .org etc.). You used to be
able to get wildcard certs but I don't know what the current status is
on that.

Rgds,
Owen Boyle
Disclaimer: Any disclaimer attached to this message may be ignored. 
>Thanks in advance. 

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