Automating ACMEv2 Certificate Management on BIG-IP
While we often associate and confuse Let's Encrypt with ACMEv2, the former is ultimately a consumer of the latter. The "Automated Certificate Management Environment" (ACME) protocol describes a system for automating the renewal of PKI certificates. The ACME protocol can be used with public services like Let's Encrypt, but also with internal certificate management services. In this article we explore the more generic support of ACME (version 2) on the F5 BIG-IP.Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt has revolutionized the way website owners implement HTTPS by offering free and automated SSL certificates, making secure connections accessible to everyone. This article delves into the technical aspects of Let's Encrypt, explaining how it establishes trust and secures your website. Before diving into Let's Encrypt, it's essential to understand the role of a Certificate Authority (CA). CAs are trusted entities that verify domain ownership and issue SSL certificates. They form the foundation of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that enables secure communication on the internet. The Role of a Certificate Authority (CA): The process begins when a web server requests a certificate from the CA, specifying the domain name. The CA sends a challenge to validate the server's control over the domain. Upon successful validation, the CA issues an X.509/SSL/TLS certificate, which the server installs. When a user visits the website, their browser verifies the certificate's authenticity by checking the chain of trust back to a trusted root certificate. If the chain is valid, a secure connection is established. A critical role in this ecosystem is played by Certificate Authorities (CAs). CAs are trusted third-party entities responsible for: Domain Validation:CAs employ various mechanisms to validate the ownership or control of a domain name by the entity requesting the certificate. This validation process helps mitigate phishing attacks and ensures certificates are issued to legitimate entities. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Management:CAs operate within a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) framework. They maintain a repository of trusted root certificates and issue intermediate certificates signed by a trusted root. Website administrators generate a public/private key pair, and the CA signs a certificate binding the public key to the validated domain identity. This signed certificate, containing the public key and domain information, is then installed on the web server. Trust Chain Establishment:Web browsers and operating systems come pre-loaded with a set of trusted root certificates issued by well-known CAs. When a user visits a website with a valid SSL/TLS certificate, the browser can verify the certificate's authenticity by chaining it back to a trusted root certificate, establishing a secure connection. This sequence below shows the role of a CA in the certificate issuance and validation process: Traditionally, obtaining certificates from CAs involved a manual enrollment process and significant costs. Let's Encrypt disrupted this model by offering free certificates through an automated process using the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol. ACME streamlines communication between web servers and the CA, automating the entire certificate lifecycle, including issuance and renewal. Let's Encrypt certificates have a short 90-day validity period to enhance security, and the automation ensures seamless renewal before expiration. This sequence shows the steps involved in obtaining a Let's Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate for a web server. Here's a breakdown: Requesting a Certificate:The web server software initiates the process by sending a request to Let's Encrypt CA, asking for a certificate. Challenge for Validation:Let's Encrypt CA responds by sending the web server a challenge. This challenge is designed to verify that the software requesting the certificate actually controls the domain name. A common challenge involves placing a specific file on the web server's directory. Responding to the Challenge:The web server software must complete the challenge. In this example, it would place the specific file in the designated directory on the server. Verification by Let's Encrypt:Once the web server software completes the challenge, Let's Encrypt CA verifies the response. Two Possible Outcomes: Success:If the challenge response is valid, Let's Encrypt CA issues a new SSL/TLS certificate for the web server's domain name. The web server software then downloads the certificate from Let's Encrypt CA. The downloaded certificate is installed on the web server. Finally, the web server is configured to enable HTTPS, which encrypts communication between the website and visitors. Failure:If the challenge response is invalid (e.g., the file wasn't placed correctly), Let's Encrypt CA informs the web server of the failure. In this case, the web server software would likely retry the entire process by requesting a new certificate again. Let's Encrypt and Key Pinning Let's Encrypt recently introduced new intermediate certificates to replace older ones that are nearing expiration. These new certificates are designed to be more secure and efficient. One of the goals is to discourage the use of an outdated practice known as key pinning. Key pinning refers to a security practice where software applications are configured to trust only a specific set of cryptographic keys issued by a certificate authority (CA). In the context of Let's Encrypt, this would involve an application trusting only a particular intermediate certificate used by Let's Encrypt to sign website certificates. There are a few reasons why Let's Encrypt discourages key pinning: Manual Updates:Key pinning typically requires manual updates whenever a certificate authority changes its certificates, which can be a cumbersome and error-prone process. Reduced Flexibility:Pinned keys limit your ability to benefit from security improvements or optimizations introduced by the CA's newer certificates. Potential Outages:If a pinned certificate expires or becomes invalid, applications that rely on it may malfunction or fail entirely, potentially leading to outages. Let's Encrypt argues that trusting the built-in trust store of your operating system or web browser is a more secure and flexible approach. These trust stores are automatically updated to reflect changes made by certificate authorities, reducing the risk of errors and outages. However, there are some niche cases where key pinning might still be considered justified. For instance, an organization might pin a key if they have a specific security requirement to strictly limit trusted certificates. Overall, Let's Encrypt's move to new intermediate certificates aims to improve security and efficiency while promoting a more automated and flexible approach to certificate trust management.Let's Encrypt with Cloudflare DNS and F5 REST API
Hi all This is a followup on the now very old Let's Encrypt on a Big-IP article. It has served me, and others, well but is kind of locked to a specific environment and doesn't scale well. I have been going around it for some time but couldn't find the courage (aka time) to get started. However, due to some changes to my DNS provider (they were aquired and shut down) I finally took the plunges and moved my domains to a provider with an API and that gave me the opportunity to make a more nimble solution. To make things simple I chose Cloudflare as the community proliferation is enormous and it is easy to find examples and tools. I though think that choosing another provide with an open API isn't such a big deal. After playing around with different tools I realized that I didn't need them as it ended up being much easier to just use curl. So, if the other providers have just a somewhat close resemblance it shouldn't be such a big task converting the scripts to fit. There might be finer and more advanced solutions out there, but my goal was that I needed a solution that had as few dependencies as possible and if I could make that only Bash and Curl it would be perfect. And that is what I ended up with 😎 Just put 5 files in the same directory, adjust the config to your environment, and BAM you're good to go!!😻 And if you need to run it somewhere else just copy the directory over and continue like nothing was changed. That is what I call portability 😁 Find all the details here: Let's Encrypt with Cloudflare DNS and F5 REST API Please just drop me a line if you have any questions or feedback or find any bugs.
F5 BIGIP LetsEncrypt does not match the certificate
F5 BIG-IP 15.1.6.1 Estoy implementando en un F5 el manejo de certificados SSL de LetsEncrypt, encontre informacion aqui https://github.com/steveh565/f5-letsencrypt-http El tema es que me crea certificados pero muestra The issuer certificate (/Common/letsencrypt_full_chain.crt) does not match the certificate (/Common/patito.info_2022-10-07 Alguien a podido solucionar esto? Agradezco cualquier apoyo o tip.
Failure creating certificate acme challenge 404 error in BIG-IP F5 WAF
We have more than 600 government websites behind the BIG-IP system. We have done almost 60% of certificates created and offloaded.Suddenly we couldn't create any certificate and got the below error. This error not only for one website. Now we can't renew or create a new certificate. We use fanceg/letsencrypt -in GitHub to integrates Let's Encrypt with BigIP (GitHub - fanceg/letsencrypt-bigip). INFO: Using main config file /etc/dehydrated/configProcessing verugal.ds.gov.lk Signing domains... Generating private key... Generating signing request... Requesting new certificate order from CA... Received 1 authorizations URLs from the CA Handling authorization for verugal.ds.gov.lk 1 pending challenge(s) Deploying challenge tokens... Responding to challenge for verugal.ds.gov.lk authorization... Cleaning challenge tokens... Challenge validation has failed : ( ERROR: Challenge is invalid! (returned: invalid) (result: ["type"] "http-01" ["status"] "invalid" ["error","type"] "urn:ietf:params:acme:error:unauthorized" ["error","detail"] "Invalid response fromhttp://verugal.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE1[43.224.124.166]: 404" ["error","status"] 403 ["error"] {"type":"urn:ietf:params:acme:error:unauthorized","detail":"Invalid response fromhttp://verugal.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE1[43.224.124.166]: 404","status":403} ["url"] "https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/acme/chall-v3/12995442889/eoq1dQ" ["token"] "CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE" ["validationRecord",0,"url"] "http://verugal.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE1" ["validationRecord",0,"hostname"] "verugal.ds.gov.lk" ["validationRecord",0,"port"] "80" ["validationRecord",0,"addressesResolved",0] "43.224.124.166" ["validationRecord",0,"addressesResolved"] ["43.224.124.166"] ["validationRecord",0,"addressUsed"] "43.224.124.166" ["validationRecord",0] {"url":"http://verugal.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE","hostname":"verugal.ds.gov.lk","port":"80","addressesResolved":["43.224.124.166"],"addressUsed":"43.224.124.166"} ["validationRecord"] [{"url":"http://verugal.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/CnhSunPlqtFks1odEZVDOs_0OScqWBzf_xDejAo14WE","hostname":"verugal.ds.gov.lk","port":"80","addressesResolved":["43.224.124.166"],"addressUsed":"43.224.124.166"}] ["validated"] "2021-05-10T04:46:36Z") Processing vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk Signing domains... Generating private key... Generating signing request... Requesting new certificate order from CA... Received 1 authorizations URLs from the CA Handling authorization for vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk 1 pending challenge(s) Deploying challenge tokens... Responding to challenge for vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk authorization... Cleaning challenge tokens... Challenge validation has failed : ( ERROR: Challenge is invalid! (returned: invalid) (result: ["type"] "http-01" ["status"] "invalid" ["error","type"] "urn:ietf:params:acme:error:unauthorized" ["error","detail"] "Invalid response fromhttp://vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y[43.224.124.166]: 404" ["error","status"] 403 ["error"] {"type":"urn:ietf:params:acme:error:unauthorized","detail":"Invalid response fromhttp://vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y[43.224.124.166]: 404","status":403} ["url"] "https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/acme/chall-v3/12995448812/pq_1KA" ["token"] "v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y" ["validationRecord",0,"url"] "http://vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y" ["validationRecord",0,"hostname"] "vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk" ["validationRecord",0,"port"] "80" ["validationRecord",0,"addressesResolved",0] "43.224.124.166" ["validationRecord",0,"addressesResolved"] ["43.224.124.166"] ["validationRecord",0,"addressUsed"] "43.224.124.166" ["validationRecord",0] {"url":"http://vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y","hostname":"vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk","port":"80","addressesResolved":["43.224.124.166"],"addressUsed":"43.224.124.166"} ["validationRecord"] [{"url":"http://vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk/.well-known/acme-challenge/v9qnpu7SA8F5xFQjk0VgltT__yVviLmyGftlvTAKY9Y","hostname":"vrc.bopepoddala.ds.gov.lk","port":"80","addressesResolved":["43.224.124.166"],"addressUsed":"43.224.124.166"}] ["validated"] "2021-05-10T04:46:58Z") Can anyone help me out with this issue? Are there any process changes or updates in letsencrypt site or BIG-IP intigrations? Due to this lots of government websites affected!
Weird problem with Letsencrypt and SNI
Hello, Im facing a problem with a VIP which has more than 1 certificate, Im adding an SNI certificate , and then another certificates which has been made by letsencrypt script for f5. if client visit example.com the certificate loads well. if client visit it loads the default sni certificate.. in the certificate san it has both www and non-www certificate. What could cause such issue? anyone else has faced this problem? Thanks!
