Hi Shawn,

Unfortunately my clients want that illusion of safety and it is just easier
to give them that rather than argue with them. I really don't care to argue
this point.

Do you have any ideas for solving the problem at hand?

cheers,

Luke

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 11:42 AM Shawn Heisey <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 3/14/2021 5:50 PM, Luke B wrote:
> > Setting up jetty to listen only on localhost without SSL and having an
> > nginx (or other web server) reverse proxy to provide SSL is possible but
> > unlikely something that is acceptable as encryption is required all the
> > way to the java process. In this case a tcp dump would reveal passwords.
>
> Think about what would have to happen for somebody to get that packet
> capture.
>
> 1) If the reverse proxy is on a different machine than Jetty, one way in
> is for the attacker to have physical access to the hardware.  They could
> patch a rogue machine in with two network ports and capture everything
> going over the machine's wire.  A raspberry pi with a USB network dongle
> could probably be used for that -- relatively easy to hide.
>
> 2) If the attacker manages to acquire remote access and admin/root
> privileges, they could install tools on the machine (like tcpdump or
> wireshark) to capture those packets whether the two processes are on the
> same machine (using localhost) or on separate machines.
>
> If you have good physical security, the first attack is not going to
> happen.
>
> If the second attack succeeds, you've got bigger problems than a lack of
> encryption on the back end of your web services.  They've got admin/root
> access, and might be able to obtain those privileges on other machines
> through software vulnerabilities.  They would probably already have
> access to everything they might glean from capturing unencrypted
> packets.  An example: Credentials in config files for services like
> mail, database, microservices, etc.
>
> It is my strong opinion that encrypting the connection between a
> front-end reverse proxy or load balancer and back end web services is an
> illusion of safety that comes at the expense of CPU time needed for the
> extra encryption.
>
> Anybody is welcome to disagree with me.
>
> I worked at a company that was setting up services for a very high
> profile customer.  That customer wanted the back end encrypted like you
> do.  We did it, but I think it was unnecessary.
>
> Thanks,
> Shawn
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