HTTPS

HTTPS secures information when it’s being transmitted over the internet. Everybody should use HTTPS, but it is especially important that we use HTTPS because of the sensitive data we transmit.

Compatibility

Some of this will be trial and error. Some settings can be tweaked on our side but some particularly old devices/software will just never work with our system.

It’s difficult to anticipate what devices are out there being used in large numbers, and what browsers are being used on those devices. In a number of cases devices with old operating systems (like Windows XP, old Android and old BlackBerry OS) will not be compatible with our HTTPS setup when using the default/built-in browser. If users have a recent version of a commonly used browser like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera Browser installed then that should be compatible.

Users accessing an HTTPS site via a recent version of Opera Mini should not have any compatibility issues on any platform but the effectiveness of the encrypted connection is reduced as the connection is decrypted at Opera’s servers.

You can use the SSL Server Test from SSL Labs with one of our domains to see the most up-to-date configuration that we support.

Server Name Indication (SNI) compatibility

The first and most important feature that any device connecting to an HTTPS site on our cluster will need is Server Name Indication (SNI) support. This, unfortunately, cannot be worked around and is a strict requirement born out of the fundamental design of the cluster. Please see the Wikipedia article for full details.

The native/built-in browsers on the following mobile devices do not support SNI (although it may be possible for users to install a browser that does support SNI):

  • Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” and earlier

  • Nokia Symbian OS

  • BlackBerry OS 7.1 and earlier

The following browsers on desktop devices do not support SNI:

  • Internet Explorer on Windows XP

It’s also important to note that the following Python software we use does not support SNI:

  • The ssl standard library module in Python < 2.7.9

  • Vumi < 0.6.15

  • Twisted < 14.0.0

Transport Layer Security (TLS) compatibility

The load balancer is currently only configured to support some versions of Transport Layer Security (TLS), namely TLS 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.

Some older browsers (Internet Explorer 6 or below) do not support our configuration. Once again, Wikipedia has a nice table detailing compatibility.

It’s generally a good idea from a security standpoint to only support the latest TLS versions. We will never support technologies older than TLS 1.0 such as SSL 3.0. We may have to disable the older versions of TLS that we support as new vulnerabilities are found.

Enabling HTTPS on Mesos clusters

The SRE team have made it really easy to set up HTTPS with free, automatically renewing certificates from Let’s Encrypt.

Rate limits

Let’s Encrypt is a free service but ultimately the service has to have some limits. Please read the Let’s Encrypt documentation for full details. The only limit that will be relevant to most people is the “Certificates per Registered Domain” limit. This limit is set at 20 certificates per week.

The way this limit works is important to understand: it is applied per registered domain. This means that it is easy for us to hit the rate limit if we issue certificates for many sites using a wildcard domain under one of Praekelt’s commonly used domain names. For example, a domain like seed-message-sender.seed.ng.p16n.org is actually under the registered domain p16n.org - which means it shares its rate limit with many other Praekelt sites.

tl;dr: If you have a domain that has been bought specifically for your project then you probably don’t need to worry about rate limits. If you are using a domain that ends in p16n.org or unicore.io then please speak to SRE before trying to issue a certificate. Certificates are free but not unlimited.

Setup

Add an application label to the app you want to set up using Mission Control. Right now only one domain per app is supported.

The label is called MARATHON_ACME_0_DOMAIN. Set it to the domain name you want a certificate for.

A few moments after adding the label the application should be available over HTTPS.

Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS

Once you’ve verified that the application works correctly over HTTPS, set the label HAPROXY_0_REDIRECT_TO_HTTPS to true to redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

Using HTTP Strict Transport Security

Another option that you can add for enhanced security is to enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This option improves security when your site is accessed via a modern web browser. It won’t have any effect if your app is an API rather than a website.

You must verify that the certificate and HTTP to HTTPS redirect is working correctly before enabling HSTS. Once a user’s browser “sees” the HSTS header for the first time it will only connect to the site via HTTPS for the next 6 months. This is a thing that is easy to mess up but if your site has been running with HTTPS and redirects enabled for a while without issues then enabling HSTS is a good idea.

To enable HSTS, set the application label HAPROXY_0_USE_HSTS to a value of true.

The HSTS header that is sent does not include the includeSubDomains or preload directives.