SSL certificate for AllStarLink

What is SSL

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security technology that establishes an encrypted connection between a web server (host) and a web browser (client). This encryption ensures that all data exchanged between the two remains private and secure, protecting against hackers, identity theft, and cyberattacks.

What you need

You will need a FQDN configured on your Raspberry Pi or your Router. I am using a Unify USG Ultra, and a free DDNS thru freemyip.com site.

FQDN setup

Go to [freemyip.com free my IP] website and register your domain name, which will be something like my_domain_name.freemyip.com

Save the generated token, there is no way te recover it if you loose it.

It will look like:

https://freemyip.com/update?token=your_unique_password&domain=my_domain_name.freemyip.com

USG Ultra DDNS setup

Go to Settings > Internet > Primary (WAN1) > Dynamic DNS > Create New Dynamic DNS and input the following data.

New Dynamic DNS
Interface	WAN
Service	freemyip
Host Name	Any Name
User Name	my_domain_name
Password	your_unique_password
Server	freemyip.com

Next, go to Settings > Application Firewall > Port Forwarding > Add Rule and forward port 443 Protocol TCP to your AllStarLink node Raspberry Pi IP address.

SSL certificate setup

First edit the file 000-default.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

and add the following code at the end of it.

<VirtualHost *:443>
	# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
	# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
	# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
	# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
	# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
	# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
	# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
	#ServerName www.example.com

	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html

	# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
	# error, crit, alert, emerg.
	# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
	# modules, e.g.
	#LogLevel info ssl:warn

	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

  # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
	# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
	# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
	# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
	# after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
	#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf

	#   SSL Engine Switch:
	#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
	SSLEngine on

	#   SSL Engine Options:
	#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
	#   o FakeBasicAuth:
	#	Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
	#	the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
	#	user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
	#	Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
	#	file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
	#   o ExportCertData:
	#	This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
	#	SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
	#	server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
	#	authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
	#	into CGI scripts.
	#   o StdEnvVars:
	#	This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
	#	Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
	#	because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
	#	useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
	#	exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
	#   o OptRenegotiate:
	#	This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
	#	directives are used in per-directory context.
	#SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire
	<FilesMatch "\.(?:cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
		SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</FilesMatch>
	<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
		SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
	</Directory>

	SSLProtocol		 all -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
	SSLCipherSuite	  ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHAC>
	SSLHonorCipherOrder on
	SSLCompression	  off
	SSLSessionTickets   off

	Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
</VirtualHost>

In this case we will use Certbot which is free but requieres snapd and core. On your AllStarLink node type:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
sudo reboot
sudo snap install core
sudo snap install hello-world

Test the core running the hello world program.

hello-world

If succeeded, now install certbot.

sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

And now, lets get a certificate.

sudo certbot --apache

It will ask you to input your previously generated FQDN at frremyip.com and your email and to select a conf file which will be 000-default.conf.

Thats it, now you can go to your node website using your https address.

https://my_domain_name.freemyip.com/allmon3