> By issuing a single certificate with Subject Alternate Names to cover
multiple domains, LetsEncrypt can leak the IP of an origin server that is
behind a service such as Cloudflare. This increases the risk of DDOS attack.

I echo Hugo and Rich's position that ACME is the wrong place to solve this
particular problem.

It's also worth noting that certificate attributes are just one way[0] that
your origin might be discovered by an adversary attempting to bypass your
CDN/WAF.

[0] https://cloudpiercer.org/paper/CloudPiercer.pdf

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 8:51 PM, Bryan Jones <[email protected]> wrote:

> Summary:
>
> By issuing a single certificate with Subject Alternate Names to cover
> multiple domains, LetsEncrypt can leak the IP of an origin server that is
> behind a service such as Cloudflare. This increases the risk of DDOS attack.
>
>
> Scenario:
>
> 1. I run a VPS that, through Apache Virtual Hosts, serves content for 5
> websites. All five sites are secured with LetsEncrypt.
>
> 2. Suppose that two of those websites are protected by Cloudflare. The IP
> address of my origin server is hidden and public traffic can only resolve
> my DNS to the IP address of Cloudflare’s server for these two websites.
>
> 3. By pulling up the LetsEncrypt SSL certificate in my browser, I can see
> all five of my websites listed in the Subject Alternate Name field. An
> attacker could reasonably assume that these sites might be related (i.e.
> running on the same server). Using that information, the attacker could
> resolve the DNS for each of the five sites and note that three of them
> resolve to a non-Cloudflare IP. The attacker now has the IP address of the
> origin server that is supposed to be protected by CloudFlare.
>
>
> Suggestion:
>
> Is it possible for LetsEncrypt to (optionally?) issue one SSL certificate
> per domain instead of using SAN?
>
>
> Reasoning:
>
> It’s very common for a single server to host several different websites
> through Virtual Hosts. It would be ideal if LetsEncrypt did not “leak” the
> fact that those websites are all related.
>
>
> Alternate Ways To Mitigate:
>
> 1. Ensure that ALL websites using the same LetsEncrypt certificate are
> protected by Cloudflare and that none of them have any CNAME aliases that
> can resolve to the origin server’s IP.
>
> 2. Run a separate server for each website.
>
>
> -Bryan
>
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>
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