I have a REST API built with node that communicates over SSL. The server is built uses express and makes use of vhosts and cors. I have recently added a listener on port 80 as well so I can force HTTPS. As I test, I tried to access http://manage.domain.com:443/ but the request just hangs. Neither listeners seem to accept it. All I want to do is redirect that request to https.
I assume you already know this, but you'll need an https server (duh) to serve the HTTPS content. It doesn't matter what port you run it on; 443 is just the default port for HTTPS. If you want HTTP requests to redirect to HTTPS, you'll need both an http and an https server. Here's an example of how your app file should look:
var http = require('http'),
https = require('https'),
express = require('express')
fs = require('fs');
var domain = 'localhost';
var app = express();
app.get('*', function(req, res){
// redirect to HTTPS
res.redirect('https://' + domain + req.path);
});
http.createServer(app).listen(80, function(){
console.log('HTTP listening on port 80');
});
var appSecure = express();
// configure your app here
var options = {
key: fs.readFileSync('ssl_key.pem'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('ssl_cert.crt'),
};
https.createServer(options, appSecure).listen(443, function(){
console.log('HTTPS listening on port 443');
});
Obviously, you will need your SSL key and certificate to make this work.
As you probably know, most systems require elevated privileges to open a port less than 1025; so if you use port 80 and port 443, you'll have to run the app server with elevated privileges (if you're running on OSX/Linux/BSD, just do sudo node app.js).
Related
I have two node servers on a single host. One HTTP server with the responsibility of redirecting to HTTPS, and one HTTPS server responsible for serving my application:
const express = require('express');
const https = require('https');
const http = require('http')
const fs = require('fs');
const app = express();
const httpsOptions = {
key: fs.readFileSync('./local-ssl/key.pem'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('./local-ssl/cert.pem'),
passphrase: '*****'
}
//other stuff
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(301, { "Location": "https://" + req.headers['host'] + req.url });
res.end();
}).listen(80);
https.createServer(httpsOptions, app).listen(443)
This works great locally.
The issue is, when I deploy this code and run these servers on AWS EC2 you cannot start servers on ports 80 and 443. I am trying to figure out how I can get around this issue. If I run them on different ports, the servers will not respond, and worse, redirect incorrectly.
Example:
If I serve HTTP on 8081 and HTTPS on 8443, when a redirect occurs, the code redirects to
https://my-fun-url.com:8081
which of course does not work because I am not responding to HTTPS on port 8081.
Now, I've explored the option of port forwarding, but how would this work? If I forward ports 80 and 443 to internal ports (let's say) 3000 and 4000 the same redirection problem will occur.
I have scoured the internet for so long and to me this is a simple requirement for any web-app. I would very much appreciate some detailed guidance on my strategy.
If you want to keep ports 8081 and 8443, then you simply replace 8081 with 8443 in the host header:
httpsHost = req.headers.host.replace('8081', '8443');
res.writeHead(301, {
"Location": "https://" + httpsHost + req.url
});
Now, I've explored the option of port forwarding, but how would this work? If I forward ports 80 and 443 to internal ports (let's say) 3000 and 4000 the same redirection problem will occur.
Not exactly. When someone navigates to http://my-fun-url.com (80) the request is forwarded to 3000. Your http server will respond with a redirect to https://my-fun-url.com (443) which will be forwarded to 4000, and the https server will take it from there.
The difference between the two methods is that with ports 80 and 443 being the default, they are implied and therefore can be left out from the host part of the URL. Which makes the redirect easier as there's no port in the host to replace in the first place, just the protocol part (HTTP/HTTPS).
I have a Socket.io server running on port 3000 and when running it (and the website / client) locally everything works fine. But when I push it to the server the client can't connect anymore.
The production server is running over SSL so I assumed that I need the Socket.io server to run over SSL as well. I've setup it up like this:
var app = express();
var fs = require('fs');
var is_production = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production';
if(is_production){
var options = {
key: fs.readFileSync('/etc/letsencrypt/live/mywebsite.com/privkey.pem'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('/etc/letsencrypt/live/mywebsite.com/cert.pem'),
requestCert: true
};
var server = require('https').createServer(options, app);
}else{
var server = require('http').createServer(app);
}
var io = require('socket.io')(server);
server.listen(3000);
This still doesn't work. I don't have much experience with Socket.io so any help would be appreciated. Also note that everything worked fine before I got an SSL certificate setup on the web server.
The client is connecting to ws://mywebsite.com:3000. I've tried using http://, https:// and wss:// as well, but nothing works.
EDIT: I've tried making a request through curl and I get the following error:
curl: (35) gnutls_handshake() failed: The TLS connection was non-properly terminated.
I couldn't figure out what the problem was, so here's what I did.
I have Nginx running on the same server to serve my website so what I ended up doing was configuring Nginx to proxy all SSL connections to port 3000 and forward them to the node.js server running on port 8080. This way Nginx takes care of the SSL so the node.js server doesn't need any additional configuration.
I'm currently trying to understand the difference between 2 similar curl commands.
I spun up an AWS EC2 Ubuntu instance, and installed node.js on the instance. I then created a new directory called test-server. From within this directory, I ran npm init, then npm install express. I then wrote a simple web listener called test-server.js, which looks like this:
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
app.get('/', function(req, res){
console.log('Got a request!')
res.send('Request received!\n')
})
app.listen(443, function(){
console.log('Server started')
})
Finally, I started the server with the command sudo node test-server.js, and the server started successfully.
Using aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress, I allowed communication from my local IP address to the instance over port 443. I then attempted to test the connection using the following 2 curl commands: curl <ip>:443 and curl https://<ip>. The first command gave the expected output of Request received!. However, I received this error from the second command: curl: (35) OpenSSL SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to <ip>:443.
Now, I'm FAR from a networking expert, but I would have expected both of these commands to function in the same way. Based on this result, I have 2 questions:
What is the difference between these 2 commands?
How can I change the configuration such that the second command works as well as the first?
Your application is serving regular HTTP on 443 port. In order to use https protocol you need to use encryption keys
var fs = require('fs');
var http = require('http');
var https = require('https');
var privateKey = fs.readFileSync('sslcert/server.key', 'utf8');
var certificate = fs.readFileSync('sslcert/server.crt', 'utf8');
var credentials = {key: privateKey, cert: certificate};
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.get('/', function(req, res){
console.log('Got a request!')
res.send('Request received!\n')
})
var httpsServer = https.createServer(credentials, app);
httpsServer.listen(443);
Command curl <ip>:443 is opening http connection to port 443 on givenip,curl https://<ip> is opening https connection to given ip.
If you want your traffic to be encrypted, stick to https:// version (and expanded code for server).
What is the difference between these 2 commands?
:443 is simply the port configuration, no different than :80. It just tells the server to serve content on that port. 443 is traditionally the port reserved for HTTPS connections, similar to how 80 is traditionally standard HTTP.
How can I change the configuration such that the second command works as well as the first?
You'll need to install a TLS cert. HTTPS indicates that a certificate is being used to secure the connection, and the absence of that certificate will cause the request to fail.
I have the following start.js file:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use(express.static('static'));
var server = app.listen(8080, function () {
var host = server.address().address;
var port = server.address().port;
console.log('Example app listening at http://%s:%s', host, port);
});
In my NodeJs application on Openshift. However, when I run rhc tail-a app-name
I can see that there is an error of :
Error: listen EADDRINUSE :::8080
I've tried 80 and 443, and received those errors:
Error: listen EACCESS 0.0.0.0:443
Or 80
Which port should I use as default on my app?
Thanks!
Use Nginx,
Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a web server. It can act as a reverse proxy server for HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols, as well as a load balancer and an HTTP cache.
It isn't good practice to run your application with root privileges or directly run your application on port 80 and your port 8080 is in use. Try different port and use reverse proxy.
But if you want to run on port 80 or 443, run your application with root privileges.
I created a self-signed certificate and installed it on apache as well as on node.js(port 3000). On localhost both https://localhost and https://localhost:3000 works well.
So, I bought GoDaddy Standard SSL certificate and installed it on the server(http://gatherify.com). Now https://gatherify.com works well, but ssl on node isn't working.
When I access https://gatherify.com:3000 i get "The connection was interrupted".
I executed curl:
root#host [~]# curl -v -s -k https://gatherify.com:3000
* About to connect() to gatherify.com port 3000 (#0)
* Trying 108.160.156.123... connected
* Connected to gatherify.com (108.160.156.123) port 3000 (#0)
* Initializing NSS with certpath: sql:/etc/pki/nssdb
* warning: ignoring value of ssl.verifyhost
* NSS error -5938
* Closing connection #0
* SSL connect error
Any suggestions to fix this?
UPDATE
*SERVER SIDE :*
var io = require('socket.io'),
connect = require('connect'),
fs = require('fs'),
var privateKey = fs.readFileSync('cert/server.key').toString();
var certificate = fs.readFileSync('cert/server.crt').toString();
var options = {
key: privateKey,
cert: certificate
};
var app = connect(options).use(connect.static('../htdocs/node/'));
app.listen(3000);
var server = io.listen(app);
server.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {
console.log("Connected");
});
CLIENT SIDE:
<html> <head>
<script type = "text/javascript" src = "https://gatherify.com:3000/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>
<script type = "text/javascript">
var socket = io.connect('https://gatherify.com:3000', {secure:true});
</script>
</head><body></body></html>
If you want to run a node.js app on port 3000 with (behind) HTTPS, then you need to set up a proxy service on port 443 to proxy HTTPS requests to port 3000.
You didn't mention what server you have running on port 443 right now (is it Apache?) but you might want to
move that service to a new port (e.g. 4000), then run a node http proxy on port 443 that handles HTTPS.
Then set up a subdomain for the node.js app that you have running on port 3000 (e.g. blah.gatherify.com).
Then, using node http proxy, you will proxy all requests that are made to "gatherify.com" to port 4000, and all requests that are made to "blah.gatherify.com" to port 3000.
When all is set up properly, users can visit "https://gatherify.com" or "https://blah.gatherify.com" (without using :port numbers) and it'll all be secured with SSL. ;)
Install certificates Client Side (in Node.js)
If you need a node.js client to be able to recognize your self-assigned or cheaply-bought SSL certificates you can use ssl-root-cas, which is available on npm.
'use strict';
var https = require('https')
, cas
;
// This will add the well-known CAs
// to `https.globalAgent.options.ca`
require('ssl-root-cas').inject();
cas = https.globalAgent.options.ca;
cas.push(fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'ssl', '01-cheap-ssl-intermediary-a.pem')));
cas.push(fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'ssl', '02-cheap-ssl-intermediary-b.pem')));
cas.push(fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'ssl', '03-cheap-ssl-site.pem')));
This will make your certs available to the core https module as well as modules that depend on it such as request and socket.io-client without deleting the normal ssl certs (which is the default behavior for some odd reason).