Let's Encypt support

pwnd28

Hi everybody,

for the last few months i fallowed the Let's Encrypt Project and now it s going in the final round with the project.

My question is, if there will be a package for the pfsense to be installed or a default support in future releases?

greetings

heper

isn't letencrypt just another CA ?

johnpoz

yes but they are going to have some idiot proof script where user just clicks a button, runs a script sort of thing

Anyone who has gone through the trouble of setting up a secure website knows what a hassle getting and maintaining a certificate can be. Let’s Encrypt automates away the pain and lets site operators turn on and manage HTTPS with simple commands.

Getting a Certificate

The letsencrypt tool always handles the certificate request and authentication for you.
With Automatic Web Server Configuration

This will automatically configure Apache and Nginx servers with your new certificate.

$ letsencrypt run

Think they are asking for some sort of package to integrate the script.. Pretty pointless if you ask me..

doktornotor

@pwnd28: I already mentioned this elsewhere. This needs an existing FreeBSD port first. Cannot be intergrated in any way without that.

johnpoz

There seems to be some work on a port, looks like one even done already if not current code.
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203405

But is this something that is really needed? The ca manager could be used to install the certs and you could use anything to do the csr and get the certs.. And then just use the CA manager to install the cert into pfsense and use it..

MikeV7896

@johnpoz:

There seems to be some work on a port, looks like one even done already if not current code.
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203405

But is this something that is really needed? The ca manager could be used to install the certs and you could use anything to do the csr and get the certs.. And then just use the CA manager to install the cert into pfsense and use it..

Except their certs are only good for 90 days, hence their preference of an automated renewal process rather than having to do it manually every 3 months. The short renewal length allows them to keep a small CRL.

KOM

90 days?? Geez, why waste time with that when you can get a freebie from StartSSL that's good for a year.

NOYB

@KOM:

90 days?? Geez, why waste time with that when you can get a freebie from StartSSL that's good for a year.

A more appropriate place for this question would be here:
Maximum and Minimum Certificate Lifetimes

For other non pfSense specific details, the Let's Encrypt and Support sites are typically better sources of information.

firewalluser

@KOM:

90 days?? Geez, why waste time with that when you can get a freebie from StartSSL that's good for a year.

If you dont know your certs have been nicked, then they are useful to hackers for a whole year.

pwnd28

Hi,
Thanks for the many answers.
I m also not sure if this is realy usefull or not. Nobody realy knows if the CA you use is trustfull or has a connection to the government or an other party.
I am exited if there will be a package or not. A lil bit better than an unsight certificate it is of course especielly through the support of 4096 bit certificates and more

firewalluser

Just interchange hackers for spooks, and interchange national for foreign, their actions amount to the same either way.

With that in mind, do you trust another entity who provides the certs when you dont know the staff and/or infrastructure being used, and even if the device is good, you still then need to trust the manufacturers of the devices being used.

All in all thats a lot of trust you need to spread around, but one of the beauties of hacking is, even if you do trust an entity, considering they may use devices that then get used at home, where offspring or others who are less tech savvy exist, their devices maybe inadvertently hacking the very entity and their devices you trust, rendering them untrustworthy without their knowledge.

With this in mind do you still want to trust a third party and not your own capabilities even when you are motivated to improve your own capabilities by learning, like printing your own certs on a standalone trusted device under your supervision?

An abstract but perhaps realistic view on life.

KOM

If you dont know your certs have been nicked, then they are useful to hackers for a whole year.

Believe me, nobody wants my certs ;D

David_W

@pwnd28:

Nobody realy knows if the CA you use is trustfull or has a connection to the government or an other party.

Best practice is to generate the private key you wish to use for a certificate locally on an uncompromised machine with a cryptographically secure random number generator. In this scenario the security of the private key is entirely in your hands because the Certificate Signing Request sent to the CA does not contain the private key.

johnpoz

I see no point to support of this on pfsense to be honest.. Other than maybe captive portal. For the webgui to admin pfsense.. Just use CA on pfsense to create a cert and trust it on your machines you will admin pfsense from. This really should be a really small list of machines!!

Now using https in your captive portal, yes https could be handy to be able to use a cert that is auto trusted by your guests.. But prob going to fail anyway even if the https your serving is valid for your https captive portal page since redirect of https is tricky and browsers don't like it and balk as well they should and if the site they have been going to via https is using hsts most browsers going to prevent it.

Your best solution is to just notify users that they have to hit your captive portal directly or try and go to a http site to get redirected. You could then redirect them to a https url that you have trusted cert for.. This would really be the only reason I could see for this.. But why not just get a https for a year from free like start or there are other places they cost a whole $10 a year.

If your so cheap to not want to pay for your ssl.. Just don't bother doing your captive portal via https - or use self signed and deploy that to your users of your captive portal on the your going to have anyway on the http url for the captive portal.

NOYB

@KOM:

If you dont know your certs have been nicked, then they are useful to hackers for a whole year.

Believe me, nobody wants my certs ;D

Fortunately the Let's Encrypt project isn't about only you.

NOYB

@johnpoz:

But why not just get a https for a year from free like start or there are other places they cost a whole $10 a year.

Let's Encrypt cert is in essence good for as long as the automation runs.

@johnpoz:

If your so cheap to not want to pay for your ssl.. Just don't bother doing your captive portal via https - or use self signed and deploy that to your users of your captive portal on the your going to have anyway on the http url for the captive portal.

It's not always only about the money. Let's Encrypt cert automation can be very appealing too.

firewalluser

@David_W:

@pwnd28:

Nobody realy knows if the CA you use is trustfull or has a connection to the government or an other party.

Best practice is to generate the private key you wish to use for a certificate locally on an uncompromised machine with a cryptographically secure random number generator. In this scenario the security of the private key is entirely in your hands because the Certificate Signing Request sent to the CA does not contain the private key.

Thats the rub, even if you had an uncompromised machine so many zero days make it possible to obtain such things so if you ever get something like this in your bios http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/hacking-team-uses-uefi-bios-rootkit-to-keep-rcs-9-agent-in-target-systems/ well you might just as well throw your system in the bin.

Edit. I'll chuck this link in as its useful which might be of interest. http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Secure_Boot_in_Modern_Computer_Security_Solutions_2013.pdf

@johnpoz:

I see no point to support of this on pfsense to be honest.. Other than maybe captive portal. For the webgui to admin pfsense.. Just use CA on pfsense to create a cert and trust it on your machines you will admin pfsense from. This really should be a really small list of machines!!

I'm no longer using any encryption to access devices or services lan side as I cant inspect the data, any encryption found can be blocked by snort/suricata and investigated. Things like web access to secure websites now take place on a separate device from a linux live cd with no hard drive or other forms of storage and an easily flashable bios.

As to accessing pfsense, switches etc, as above but usernames/password are locally stored so no radius servers for convenience, as its all about minimising the risk of unknowns or to use a more popular phrase, zero days.

If your so cheap to not want to pay for your ssl.. Just don't bother doing your captive portal via https - or use self signed and deploy that to your users of your captive portal on the your going to have anyway on the http url for the captive portal.

Its not so much about being cheap, but trusting the other entities in the supply chain, as it is we have to trust so many people already, reducing that risk just makes sense, which is why we dont trust some people to do some things for us. Others we have to trust when we are incapable of doing something, but where possible its better to do what you can where possible.

johnpoz

@NOYB:

Let's Encrypt cert is eventually good for as long as the automation runs.

And how often does it look to update? Every day? What if goes to update day before the cert runs out and fails to update for whatever reason - issue on their end, firewall problem on your end, etc.

I don't see the automated updating of ssl to be a good thing to be honest. While I can see this useful on say personal site on some webhost for more users to start using https for their sites. I just do not really see a need off pfsense.. Its a firewall not a WEB SERVER.. Using some automated process to use https for your webgui just seems silly. There should be what a handful of people accessing a firewall gui in the first place.. So why not just issue your own self signed and have those machines used to access it trust the CA that is completely under your control.

Now if you want to use it on your web server behind pfsense - have at it.. I will prob use this on some of my play systems.. Just don't see need/use on my firewall at all.. Especially when that firewall system has a CA..

NOYB

John,

Please go read up on the subject before acting like an expert.

stanthewizard

I think too a package would be very useful especially when you use squid reverse proxy with Apache and Exchange.

:)

fourseasons

I wanted to open a new thread on this but found this one just before posting. ::)

–-

Let's encrypt is a new CA that will begin signing free trusted certificates to the public on 3.12.2015.

The project is founded by the likes of of Mozilla, Akamai, Cisco and the EFF who work together in the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). [1]

The "catch" is that the certificates have a lifetime of 90 days. Their reasoning behind this is that they want to limit damage from key compromises and they want to encourage automation, which I think makes sense. [2]

These free certificates would be perfect for some pfsense applications like the captive portal or the pfsense web interface.
From what I can tell it has already been implemented in python or javascript so it should run on FreeBSD.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Security_Research_Group
[2] https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/09/why-90-days.html

pwnd28

@fourseasons:

I wanted to open a new thread on this but found this one just before posting. ::)

–-

Let's encrypt is a new CA that will begin signing free trusted certificates to the public on 3.12.2015.

The project is founded by the likes of of Mozilla, Akamai, Cisco and the EFF who work together in the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). [1]

The "catch" is that the certificates have a lifetime of 90 days. Their reasoning behind this is that they want to limit damage from key compromises and they want to encourage automation, which I think makes sense. [2]

These free certificates would be perfect for some pfsense applications like the captive portal or the pfsense web interface.
From what I can tell it has already been implemented in python or javascript so it should run on FreeBSD.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Security_Research_Group
[2] https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/09/why-90-days.html

That sounds good. I think i will try to chnage my pfsense to the letsencrypt ca in the christmas hollidys.
i will post my experiences :)

johnpoz

NOYB.. And in what point did I say I was an expert? And at what point did I sound like one.. Please explain to me why a FIREWALL with limited access to its webgui by only ADMINS that has its own built in CA already would need/want and automated system to install a cert that expires every 90 days if it can not phone home..

I just do not get it?? I have a cert on my web gui, took all of 2 seconds to create and trust from my different machines I admin pfsense from..

I mentioned already that it might be a good idea for something like captive portal as well.

singerie

The project is now in public beta.

It seems to be supported on freebsd :

https://letsencrypt.readthedocs.org/en/latest/contributing.html#freebsd

https://letsencrypt.readthedocs.org/en/latest/using.html#installation-and-usage

filnko

gonzopancho mentioned on reddit that there will be a let's encrypt package in 2.4 ;D

singerie

Package is there in the nightly, but i don't know how to use it … lol

jimp

@singerie:

Package is there in the nightly, but i don't know how to use it … lol

It depends on what you want to do with it. For the GUI:

Visit keys tab, make a new entry, click the button to generate a new account key, then click the button to register the key, then save.

Visit the certs tab, make a new cert, enter a hostname and setup a challenge/response method in the SAN list (pick a method, click +, enter the details), then save, then click issue/renew.

What you can use for the challenge depends on what you have available. If your DNS provider for your domain is listed you can probably use one of the DNS update methods, or if your server supports RFC2136 you could setup keys for the TXT records it wants to make and use the nsupdate option (this is what I prefer to do).

I would advise against attempting the webroot method directly on the firewall. You could port forward port 80 on the firewall's WAN address to a local web server and then use the webroot FTP option perhaps if you don't have any other choice.

Once you have managed to get a cert issued, go to System > Advanced, pick it for the GUI cert. Edit the cert entry in the ACME package and setup a new action for a shell command to run /etc/rc.restart_webgui, save again. Visit the general settings tab and check the box, then save.

If you want to use it for something other than the GUI, repeat the process but pick it wherever you need to use it instead (e.g. haproxy), though your update method may vary for that.

I'll write up a more thorough doc on it eventually.

moscato359

@KOM:

90 days?? Geez, why waste time with that when you can get a freebie from StartSSL that's good for a year.

The let's encrypt script can be put on cron, and automate every 90 days with a new cert.

It's done regularly on linux webservers.

mandrekogmail.com

@KOM:

90 days?? Geez, why waste time with that when you can get a freebie from StartSSL that's good for a year.

One reason may be that the newest version of Google Chrome is no longer trusting StartSSL, due to their parent company doing some shady things.

yodaphone

@jimp:

@singerie:

Package is there in the nightly, but i don't know how to use it … lol

It depends on what you want to do with it. For the GUI:

Visit keys tab, make a new entry, click the button to generate a new account key, then click the button to register the key, then save.

Visit the certs tab, make a new cert, enter a hostname and setup a challenge/response method in the SAN list (pick a method, click +, enter the details), then save, then click issue/renew.

What you can use for the challenge depends on what you have available. If your DNS provider for your domain is listed you can probably use one of the DNS update methods, or if your server supports RFC2136 you could setup keys for the TXT records it wants to make and use the nsupdate option (this is what I prefer to do).

I would advise against attempting the webroot method directly on the firewall. You could port forward port 80 on the firewall's WAN address to a local web server and then use the webroot FTP option perhaps if you don't have any other choice.

Once you have managed to get a cert issued, go to System > Advanced, pick it for the GUI cert. Edit the cert entry in the ACME package and setup a new action for a shell command to run /etc/rc.restart_webgui, save again. Visit the general settings tab and check the box, then save.

If you want to use it for something other than the GUI, repeat the process but pick it wherever you need to use it instead (e.g. haproxy), though your update method may vary for that.

I'll write up a more thorough doc on it eventually.

awesome.. i had my dns with namecheap & wasnt able to figure out how to do NSUpdate with them. so moved it to cloudflare & it worked.

If you use cloudflare make sure the dns uses cloudflare DNS only & has a grey cloud. Grey Cloud: Records that display a grey cloud icon will bypass Cloudflare, using only Cloudflare DNS

if you have an orange cloud the auth fails. you can re-enable it after the cert is issued

doktornotor

If someone really insists on using a local webroot.

1/ Install HAproxy package.
2/ Put this to HAProxy > Files (Type - Lua script, Name: acme-http01-webroot.lua)

(or download from here)


-- ACME http-01 domain validation plugin for Haproxy 1.6+
-- copyright (C) 2015 Jan Broer
--

acme = {}
acme.version = "0.1.1"

--
-- Configuration
--
-- When HAProxy is *not* configured with the 'chroot' option you must set an absolute path here and pass 
-- that as 'webroot-path' to the letsencrypt client

acme.conf = {
	["non_chroot_webroot"] = ""
}

--
-- Startup
--  
acme.startup = function()
	core.Info("[acme] http-01 plugin v" .. acme.version);
end

--
-- ACME http-01 validation endpoint
--
acme.http01 = function(applet)
	local response = ""
	local reqPath = applet.path
	local src = applet.sf:src()
	local token = reqPath:match( ".+/(.*)$" )

	if token then
		token = sanitizeToken(token)
	end

	if (token == nil or token == '') then
		response = "bad request\n"
		applet:set_status(400)
		core.Warning("[acme] malformed request (client-ip: " .. tostring(src) .. ")")
	else
		auth = getKeyAuth(token)
		if (auth:len() >= 1) then
			response = auth .. "\n"
			applet:set_status(200)
			core.Info("[acme] served http-01 token: " .. token .. " (client-ip: " .. tostring(src) .. ")")
		else
			response = "resource not found\n"
			applet:set_status(404)
			core.Warning("[acme] http-01 token not found: " .. token .. " (client-ip: " .. tostring(src) .. ")")
		end
	end

	applet:add_header("Server", "haproxy/acme-http01-authenticator")
	applet:add_header("Content-Length", string.len(response))
	applet:add_header("Content-Type", "text/plain")
	applet:start_response()
	applet:send(response)
end

--
-- strip chars that are not in the URL-safe Base64 alphabet
-- see https://github.com/letsencrypt/acme-spec/blob/master/draft-barnes-acme.md
--
function sanitizeToken(token)
	_strip="[^%a%d%+%-%_=]"
	token = token:gsub(_strip,'')
	return token
end

--
-- get key auth from token file
--
function getKeyAuth(token)
        local keyAuth = ""
        local path = acme.conf.non_chroot_webroot .. "/.well-known/acme-challenge/" .. token
        local f = io.open(path, "rb")
        if f ~= nil then
                keyAuth = f:read("*all")
                f:close()
        end
        return keyAuth
end

core.register_init(acme.startup)
core.register_service("acme-http01", "http", acme.http01)

3/ Create a very simple http frontend on WAN address, port 80.

4/ Use this for your certificate(s) in ACME package:

[EDIT: The image host originally used in this post is dead. Fixed using cached copies of the images on another host -jimp]

reggie14

Is there any chance that this will work with Google Domain's DNS? It doesn't look Google provides a way to create txt records using their Dynamic DNS API.

Tentacruel

@jimp:

What you can use for the challenge depends on what you have available. If your DNS provider for your domain is listed you can probably use one of the DNS update methods, or if your server supports RFC2136 you could setup keys for the TXT records it wants to make and use the nsupdate option (this is what I prefer to do)..

I've been trying to get the manual method to work with he.net, but can't figure out how to generate the TXT key - While I know I need to add it manually to my DNS, is the generation of the key included in your package or is there a manual step required here?

/SJ

jimp

@Tentacruel:

@jimp:

What you can use for the challenge depends on what you have available. If your DNS provider for your domain is listed you can probably use one of the DNS update methods, or if your server supports RFC2136 you could setup keys for the TXT records it wants to make and use the nsupdate option (this is what I prefer to do)..

I've been trying to get the manual method to work with he.net, but can't figure out how to generate the TXT key - While I know I need to add it manually to my DNS, is the generation of the key included in your package or is there a manual step required here?

/SJ

That was the first method I tested. Define the domain name entry and then click issue/renew. In the green output it tells you what the content of the record should be. Add it to DNS and then wait 2-3 minutes to be sure the record is available, then click issue/renew again.

execcr

Hello,
new user here. Fresh pfsense install update to 2.3.2_1
I've installed the acme package but i have some problems with Route 53 Dns validation
The output say that:

[Mon Feb 6 17:24:12 CET 2017] Registering account
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:13 CET 2017] Already registered
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] Update success.
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] Single domain='test.sanitazedomain.it'
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] Getting domain auth token for each domain
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] Getting webroot for domain='test.sanitazedomain.it'
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] _w='dns_aws'
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:14 CET 2017] Getting new-authz for domain='test.sanitazedomain.it'
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:15 CET 2017] The new-authz request is ok.
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:16 CET 2017] Found domain api file: /usr/local/pkg/acme/dnsapi/dns_aws.sh
[color][Mon Feb 6 17:24:18 CET 2017] Error add txt for domain:_acme-challenge.test.sanitazedomain.it[/color]
[Mon Feb 6 17:24:18 CET 2017] Please check log file for more details: /tmp/acme/test/acme_issuecert.log

i checked the log and seem to fail at curl command to retriete http.header.
If i open HTTP.HEADER file in the acme domain folder (test in this case) i get:

HTTP/1.1 505 HTTP Version not supported
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 17 16:24:18 GMT
Connection: close
x-amz-id-2: 1rjTvEvOKQpJ5zruKVbddXvS15q4+I1y/+r2qirC9S8MYXm1esOQYwkOscLruZW8zzvK0+WY8BOQiy8GvYMu0rx0Uwq8WqlH
x-amz-request-id: 8B82C340F9CA158D
Content-Length: 0

any hint? Aws access ID and secret key seems ok. I've tried also to get full access to this IAM user to Route53

jimp

Route53 made some change to their service in the last few days that might have broken this client. We've had at least one other report of Route53 dyndns not working in general (not related to acme). Odds are the route53 script needs updated to match their new API/methods.

execcr

Thank you.
Just my luck. Every time i try something new, something is broken since hours or days ::)

Freshman

Hello, cert BFU here, so sorry if I won't make much sense…
Is it somehow possible to continue with certs from previous "issuing"? I have used "acme.sh" script in Ubuntu two months ago, sucefully got some acme-challenge TXT values for my (sub)domains, which I have added manually to my DNS configuration and on the second run of "acme.sh" couple files were generated (.cer, .key, ...).

I have sucesfully added generated .cer to HAproxy on my pfSense and it is now serving me my https websites through HAproxy and it was my undestanding that when the time comes I would just have to do "acme.sh --renew -d mydomain.com" to regenerate certs and manually replace cert on HAproxy.

I wanted to automate this using this pfSense package. Is it possible to continue with started process, or do I have to generate new set of TXT values and replace them at my DNS config again?

I have tried to put content of my .key file into "Account keys" tab and define same domainname on Certificates tab with Method: DNS-manual, but attempt to "Renew" ends with green "mydomain.com is not a issued domain, skip" message.

Am I doing it all wrong?

jimp

The TXT records are only valid for a few days and then they expire – you'd have to remake them when it's time to renew anyhow.

If you use the exact same list of SANs from your original cert, LE will allow it can will consider it a reissue. If you change the the list of SANs, it's treated as a new certificate. (Not too important unless you're close to their rate limits...)

Tentacruel

@jimp:

That was the first method I tested. Define the domain name entry and then click issue/renew. In the green output it tells you what the content of the record should be. Add it to DNS and then wait 2-3 minutes to be sure the record is available, then click issue/renew again.

Thanks for the response! Oddly, when I configure the manual method I get both an issue and a renew button, rather than the joined button I get if it was set to webroot, but I think that's a minor detail.

My output, however, holds no TXT entry, which is why I was getting confused


xxx.net
Renewing certificateaccount: xxx-key 
server: letsencrypt-production 

/usr/local/pkg/acme/acme.sh --issue -d 'host.xxx.net' --home '/tmp/acme/xxx.net/' --accountconf '/tmp/acme/xxx.net/accountconf.conf' --force --reloadCmd '/tmp/acme/xxx.net/reloadcmd.sh' --dns '' --log-level 3 --log '/tmp/acme/xxx.net/acme_issuecert.log'

Array
(
[path] => /etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin/
[PATH] => /etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin/
)
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:55 UTC 2017] Single domain='host.xxx.net'
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:55 UTC 2017] Getting domain auth token for each domain
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:55 UTC 2017] Getting webroot for domain='host.xxx.net'
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:55 UTC 2017] _w
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:55 UTC 2017] Getting new-authz for domain='host.xxx.net'
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:59 UTC 2017] The new-authz request is ok.
[Mon Feb 6 21:03:59 UTC 2017] Verifying:host.xxx.net
[Mon Feb 6 21:04:02 UTC 2017] Pending
[Mon Feb 6 21:04:05 UTC 2017] host.xxx.net:Verify error:Could not connect to host.xxx.net
[Mon Feb 6 21:04:05 UTC 2017] Please check log file for more details: /tmp/acme/xxx.net/acme_issuecert.log