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

    Is the fact that I mentioned ChatGPT setting a wrong impression?

    Not at all, but the fact that it suggested jumping straight to k8s for such a trivial problem is… interesting.

    how using Unix sockets would improve my security posture here

    Unix sockets enforce another layer of protection by requiring the user/application writing/reading to/from them to have a valid UID or be part of the correct group (traditional Linux/Unix permission system). Whereas using plain localhost HTTP networking, a rogue application could somehow listen on the loopback interface and/or exploit a race condition to bind the port and prentend to be the “real” application. Network namespaces (which container management tools use to create isolated virtual networks) mostly solve this problem. Again, basic unencrypted localhost networking is fine for a vast majority of use cases/threat models.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Hey, thanks for your comment. My apologies in replying this late; I wanted to read more about Unix sockets and podman before I got back.

      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.