Hi everyone.

I was trying to research about how to implement SSL on the traffic between my clients and the containers that I host on my server.

Basically, my plan was to use upstream SSL in HAProxy to attempt to achieve this, but in order for that to work, each individual container on my server needs to be able to decrypt SSL. I do not think that is possible and that every container has the necessary libraries for it. This puts a halt on my idea for upstream encryption of traffic from my reverse-proxy to my containers.

With that said, ChatGPT suggested I use Kubernetes with a service mesh like Istio. The idea was intriguing so I started to read about it; but before I dive head-first into using k3s (TBH it’s overkill for my setup), is there any way to implement server-side encryption with podman containers and a reverse-proxy?

After writing all of this, I think I’m missing the point about a reverse-proxy being an SSL termination endpoint, but if my question makes sense to you, please let me know your thoughts!

Thanks!

  • vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    I’m missing the point about a reverse-proxy being an SSL termination endpoint

    Yes, that’s usually one of the jobs of the reverse proxy. Communication between the RP and an application container running on the same host is typically unencrypted. If you’re really paranoid about a rogue process intercepting HTTP connections between the RP and the application container, setup separate container networks for each application, and/or use unix sockets.

    ChatGPT suggested I use Kubernetes

    wtf…

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Hey, thanks for your comment. Could you explain a bit more about how using Unix sockets would improve my security posture here (in terms of not having unencrypted traffic on the network)? I will think about creating separate namespaces in podman.

      Good thing I asked haha. Is the fact that I mentioned ChatGPT setting a wrong impression? I like to go and ask about such questions to ChatGPT/Bing, sometimes they give wonderful answers, sometimes, not the best. Like this one. I thought that there must be an easier way to secure my traffic/do as much as possible to restricting it without jumping straight to k3s.

      Thanks!

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        Nothing wrong with asking LLM’s about topics, I’d even say it’s a good idea instead of directly asking on a forum. Just like searching before asking, asking an LLM before asking humans is good.

        And mentioning where you got the recommendation for k8s is also helpful. I’m not knowledgeable about k8s, but I guess the “wtf” was about the overkill of recommending k8s when simpler solutions exist.

        Unix sockets have permissions like any file, so it’s simple to restrict access to a user/group and thus process running as the user. If it’s unencrypted http on a server other processes could listen on localhost, but I’m unsure about that part.

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Sorry for replying this late; I wanted to read more about Unix sockets and podman before I got back. Thanks for your comment.

          I already responded to the other commenter with what I’ve understood and my plans, I’ll paste it here too:

          If I understand correctly, Unix sockets specifically allow two or more processes to communicate amongst each other, and are supporter on Podman (and Docker).

          Now, the question is: how do I programmatically programmatically utilise sockets for containers to communicate amongst each other?

          I was considering a reverse proxy per pod as someone else suggested, since every podman pod has its own network namespace. Connecting between pods should likely be through the reverse proxies then. I just need to figure out how I can automate the deployment of such proxies along with the pods.

          Thanks again for your comment, and please let me know if I’m missing anything.

          • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Thanks for the long reply. Sadly I don’t know enough about unix sockets and docker/podman networking to help you.

            I’ve only used unix sockets with postgresql and signald. For both I had to mount the socket into the container and for the postgres I had to change the config to use unix sockets.

            • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              I see. My use-case would probably be better served through a software bus implementation (how would I keep all of these containers attached to the bus? Isn’t that a security risk?), but perhaps handling everything through the network behind individual reverse-proxies might be the best idea in this case.