Tomcat9, ECDSA/ECC (Elliptic Curve) Certificates and HTTP/2

10 minute read , Apr 04, 2016

Tomcat9 brings bunch of new features of which support for HTTP/2 and multiple certificates per Virtual Host via SNI extension are most important ones. This needs Java 1.8, the latest APR/TC (Tomcat Native) release 1.2.x, since SNI support in current Java 1.8 is useless, which in turn requires OpenSSL version 1.0.2g installed. Early users of HTTP/2, according to one of the main Tomcat developers Mark Thomas, reported improvement of up to 20% in page speed due to its benefits like multiplexing, header compression and server push (servlet 4.0 API needed). By default HTTP/2 (h2) protocol is SSL, as expected the whole internet to be over https only in near future, but there is a clear-text version as well called h2c.

The ECDSA certificates are smaller, meaning faster processing time on the server and less CPU usage which in term means less latency and more security. It’s in the early day of adoption by the clients though so for some time we will need to support both certificate types, ECDSA and RSA.

Nice things to have so I setup a test Tomcat9 server on Ubunut 14.04.

Setup

We start by installing and setup of the prerequisites mentioned in the Introduction.

OpenSSL

Standard compile procedure, we start by installing some needed packages:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo aptitude install zlib1g-dev zlibc libcrypto++-dev

and then downloading and extracting the source:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo wget http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.2g.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo tar -xzf openssl-1.0.2g.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo chown -R igorc\: openssl-1.0.2g

Next we change to the source directory and create the openssl.ld file:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ cd openssl-1.0.2g/
igorc@sl01:~/openssl-1.0.2g$ vi openssl.ld
OPENSSL_1.0.0 {
	global:
	*;
};

and finally compile and install the software:

igorc@sl01:/opt/openssl-1.0.2g$ ./config --prefix=/opt/openssl zlib-dynamic shared -Wl,--version-script=/home/igorc/openssl-1.0.2g/openssl.ld -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions
igorc@sl01:/opt/openssl-1.0.2g$ make depend
igorc@sl01:/opt/openssl-1.0.2g$ make all
igorc@sl01:/opt/openssl-1.0.2g$ sudo make install

This will set OpenSSL 1.0.2g under /opt/openssl directory:

igorc@sl01:/opt/openssl-1.0.2g$ ls -l /opt/openssl
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr  2 19:18 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr  2 19:18 include
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Apr  2 19:18 lib
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Apr  2 19:18 ssl

Java8

One liner installation:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo echo oracle-java8-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | sudo /usr/bin/debconf-set-selections && echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list && echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys EEA14886 && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install -y oracle-java8-installer && sudo aptitude install -y oracle-java8-set-default

This will add the needed Ubuntu ppa, install the latest Oracle 1.8 JDK and set it as default Java environment.

Tomcat9

Installation

Get and unpack the latest Tomcat9 release, alfa version v9.0.0.M4 at the moment of this writing, and setup tomcat user:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo groupadd -r -g 501 tomcat9
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo useradd -r -c "Tomcat9 user" -s /bin/false -M -d /usr/share/tomcat9 -g 501 -u 501 -G www-data tomcat9
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo wget http://apache.uberglobalmirror.com/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M4/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M4.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo tar -xzf apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M4.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo mv apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M4 /usr/share/tomcat9
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo ln -sf /usr/share/tomcat9/logs /var/log/tomcat9
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo ln -sf /usr/share/tomcat9/work /var/cache/tomcat9
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo ln -sf /usr/share/tomcat9/conf /etc/tomcat9

TC-Native

We install the needed packages first:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo aptitude install libapr1-dev libssl-dev

and then we download and etract the tcnative source, xtract and build it against oopenssl-1.0.2g we installed previously:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo wget http://apache.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au/tomcat/tomcat-connectors/native/1.2.5/source/tomcat-native-1.2.5-src.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo tar -xzf tomcat-native-1.2.5-src.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:/opt$ cd tomcat-native-1.2.5-src/native
igorc@sl01:/opt/tomcat-native-1.2.5-src/native$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib --with-apr=/usr/bin/apr-1-config --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle --with-ssl=/opt/openssl
igorc@sl01:/opt/tomcat-native-1.2.5-src/native$ make
igorc@sl01:/opt/tomcat-native-1.2.5-src/native$ sudo make install

We check that tcnative is properly linked to the right openssl version (in case you have more than one installed):

igorc@sl01:/opt/tomcat-native-1.2.5-src/native$ ldd /usr/lib/libtcnative-1.so.0.2.5
linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffcd2ba5000)
libssl.so.1.0.0 => /opt/openssl/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f67d06a1000)
libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => /opt/openssl/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 (0x00007f67d0251000)
libapr-1.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapr-1.so.0 (0x00007f67d0020000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f67cfe02000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f67cfa3d000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f67cf839000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f67cf620000)
libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f67cf41b000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f67d0b3e000)

Config and SSL setup

I wanted to test the ECDSA certificate type and multi-certificate support in tomcat9. First create ECC cert and install it so tomcat can find it:

igorc@sl01:~$ openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -newkey ec:<(openssl ecparam -name secp384r1) -keyout cert_ecdsa.key -out cert_ecdsa.crt -days 7200 -subj '/C=AU/ST=New South Wales/L=Sydney/O=My Corporation Ltd./OU=DevOps/CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com'
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo mkdir /etc/tomcat9/ssl
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo cp cert_ecdsa.key cert_ecdsa.crt /etc/tomcat9/ssl/

Then created a standard RSA one too:

igorc@sl01:~$ openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:x -out server.pass.key 2048
igorc@sl01:~$ openssl rsa -passin pass:x -in server.pass.key -out server.key
igorc@sl01:~$ rm server.pass.key
igorc@sl01:~$ openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr -subj '/C=AU/ST=New South Wales/L=Sydney/O=My Corporation Ltd./OU=DevOps/CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com'
igorc@sl01:~$ openssl x509 -req -days 7200 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
Signature ok
subject=/C=AU/ST=New South Wales/L=Sydney/O=My Corporation Ltd./OU=DevOps/CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com
Getting Private key
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo cp server.key server.crt /etc/tomcat9/ssl/

Now we can configure tomcat9’s SSL/TLS connector with HTTP/2 support. Replace the default <Connector> section in the tomcat’s server.xml file, in our case /etc/tomcat9/server.xml, with the one below:

    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11AprProtocol"
               maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true" >
        <UpgradeProtocol className="org.apache.coyote.http2.Http2Protocol" />
        <SSLHostConfig honorCipherOrder="true" disableCompression="true" protocols="all"
                       ciphers="EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384
                       EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+SHA384 EECDH+aRSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+RC4
                       EECDH EDH+aRSA RC4 !aNULL !eNULL !LOW !3DES !MD5 !EXP !PSK !SRP !DSS !RC4" >
            <Certificate certificateKeyFile="conf/ssl/cert_ecdsa.key"
                         certificateFile="conf/ssl/cert_ecdsa.crt"
                         type="EC" />
            <Certificate certificateKeyFile="conf/ssl/server.key"
                         certificateFile="conf/ssl/server.crt"
                         type="RSA" />
        </SSLHostConfig>
    </Connector>

Now we can start the server:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo /usr/share/tomcat9/bin/startup.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/share/tomcat9
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/share/tomcat9
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/tomcat9/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/share/tomcat9/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/share/tomcat9/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Tomcat started.

and check for the features we need in the log file:

igorc@sl01:/opt$ sudo grep -E "AprLifecycleListener|h2" /var/log/tomcat9/catalina.out
02-Apr-2016 20:29:05.875 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener.lifecycleEvent Loaded APR based Apache Tomcat Native library 1.2.5 using APR version 1.5.1.
02-Apr-2016 20:29:05.875 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener.lifecycleEvent APR capabilities: IPv6 [true], sendfile [true], accept filters [false], random [true].
02-Apr-2016 20:29:05.881 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener.initializeSSL OpenSSL successfully initialized (OpenSSL 1.0.2g  1 Mar 2016)
02-Apr-2016 20:29:05.883 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Protocol.configureUpgradeProtocol The ["https-apr-8443"] connector has been configured to support negotiation to [h2] via ALPN

We can see the APR connector, the correct OpenSSL version and the h2 protocol available via ALPN (Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation).

Testing

CuRL

To test the server I used the trusted curl. It came up it was little bit painful to set it up due to lot of prerequisites but since I’ve done it I might show it here as well. There are some other HTTP/2 testing tools available that you can use in case you have domain name registered with proper DNS resolution setup.

First the SPDY (Google extension which is now becoming obsolete with http2) support:

igorc@sl01:~$ git clone https://github.com/tatsuhiro-t/spdylay.git
igorc@sl01:~$ cd spdylay/
igorc@sl01:~$ autoreconf -i
igorc@sl01:~$ automake
igorc@sl01:~$ autoconf
igorc@sl01:~$ ./configure
igorc@sl01:~$ make -I/opt/openssl/include/
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo make install
igorc@sl01:~$ locate libspdylay.so.7
/opt/spdylay/lib/.libs/libspdylay.so.7
/opt/spdylay/lib/.libs/libspdylay.so.7.2.0
/usr/local/lib/libspdylay.so.7
/usr/local/lib/libspdylay.so.7.2.0
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libspdylay.so.7 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libspdylay.so.7
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libspdylay.so.7.2.0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libspdylay.so.7.2.0
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ldconfig

Next is nghhtp2:

igorc@sl01:~$ git clone https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2.git
igorc@sl01:~$ cd nghttp2
igorc@sl01:~$ autoreconf -i
igorc@sl01:~$ automake
igorc@sl01:~$ autoconf
igorc@sl01:~$ OPENSSL_CFLAGS="-I/opt/openssl/include" OPENSSL_LIBS="-L/opt/openssl/lib -lssl -lcrypto -ldl" ./configure PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
igorc@sl01:~$ make
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo make install
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo updatedb
igorc@sl01:~$ locate libnghttp2.so.14
/opt/nghttp2/lib/.libs/libnghttp2.so.14
/opt/nghttp2/lib/.libs/libnghttp2.so.14.6.0
/opt/nghttp2-1.9.1/lib/.libs/libnghttp2.so.14
/opt/nghttp2-1.9.1/lib/.libs/libnghttp2.so.14.6.0
/usr/local/lib/libnghttp2.so.14
/usr/local/lib/libnghttp2.so.14.6.0
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libnghttp2.so.14 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnghttp2.so.14
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libnghttp2.so.14.0.2 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnghttp2.so.14.0.2
igorc@sl01:~$ sudo ldconfig

Finally checking the versions installed:

igorc@sl01:~$ nghttp --version
nghttp nghttp2/1.10.0-DEV
igorc@sl01:~$ nghttpx --version
nghttpx nghttp2/1.10.0-DEV
igorc@sl01:~$ nghttpd --version
nghttpd nghttp2/1.10.0-DEV
igorc@sl01:~$ h2load --version
h2load nghttp2/1.10.0-DEV

We can use this tool as SSL proxy if needed (nothing to do with the test, just mentioning):

$ sudo nghttpx \
	--frontend=*,443 \
	--backend=localhost,8080 \
	--private-key-file=/path/to/key.key \
	--certificate-file=/path/to/cert.crt

Or turn it into service:

$ sudo cp ~/nghttp2/contrib/nghttpx-init /etc/init.d/nghttpx
$ sudo service nghttpx restart

And finally CuRL:

igorc@sl01:~$ wget https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.48.0.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:~$ tar -xzf curl-7.48.0.tar.gz
igorc@sl01:~$ cd curl-7.48.0/
igorc@sl01:~$ PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/opt/openssl/lib/pkgconfig/ ./configure --with-ssl=/opt/openssl --with-nghttp2=/usr/local
igorc@sl01:~$ make && sudo make install

Now we set the correct binary and library paths so curl can find them:

igorc@sl01:~$ export PATH=/opt/openssl/bin:/usr/local/bin:igorc@sl01:~$PATH
igorc@sl01:~$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/openssl/lib:igorc@sl01:~$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Check the openssl and curl binaries and their features:

igorc@sl01:~$ openssl version
OpenSSL 1.0.2g  1 Mar 2016

igorc@sl01:~$ curl --version
curl 7.48.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.48.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.10.0-DEV
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz TLS-SRP HTTP2 UnixSockets

From the above output we can confirm that curl has http2 support.

With all this done we can run the test. I tested for both when we have only ECDSA/ECC certificate configured in tomcat, since I wanted to see this cert in action:

igorc@sl01:~$ curl --http2 -v -k -s -S -I https://localhost:8443/ -o /dev/null
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 8443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* Cipher selection: ALL:!EXPORT:!EXPORT40:!EXPORT56:!aNULL:!LOW:!RC4:@STRENGTH
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*   CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
  CApath: none
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS header, Certificate Status (22):
} [5 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
} [512 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
{ [75 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
{ [710 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12):
{ [181 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
{ [4 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
} [70 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
} [1 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
} [16 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
{ [1 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
{ [16 bytes data]
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
* ALPN, server accepted to use h2
* Server certificate:
*  subject: C=AU; ST=New South Wales; L=Sydney; O=My Corporation Ltd.; OU=DevOps; CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com
*  start date: Apr  4 02:41:03 2016 GMT
*  expire date: Dec 21 02:41:03 2035 GMT
*  issuer: C=AU; ST=New South Wales; L=Sydney; O=My Corporation Ltd.; OU=DevOps; CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com
*  SSL certificate verify result: self signed certificate (18), continuing anyway.
* Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use
* Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed)
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0
} [5 bytes data]
* Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x22dc050)
} [5 bytes data]
> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8443
> User-Agent: curl/7.48.0
> Accept: */*
>
{ [5 bytes data]
* Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS updated)!
} [5 bytes data]
< HTTP/2.0 200
< content-type:text/html;charset=UTF-8
< date:Mon, 04 Apr 2016 02:45:38 GMT
<
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact
igorc@sl01:~$

and when both cert types are configured as per our example above:

igorc@sl01:~$ curl --http2 -v -k -s -S -I https://localhost:8443/ -o /dev/null
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 8443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* Cipher selection: ALL:!EXPORT:!EXPORT40:!EXPORT56:!aNULL:!LOW:!RC4:@STRENGTH
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*   CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
  CApath: none
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS header, Certificate Status (22):
} [5 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
} [512 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
{ [75 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
{ [958 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12):
{ [333 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
{ [4 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
} [70 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
} [1 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
} [16 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
{ [1 bytes data]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
{ [16 bytes data]
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
* ALPN, server accepted to use h2
* Server certificate:
*  subject: C=AU; ST=New South Wales; L=Sydney; O=My Corporation Ltd.; OU=DevOps; CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com
*  start date: Apr  4 02:07:04 2016 GMT
*  expire date: Dec 21 02:07:04 2035 GMT
*  issuer: C=AU; ST=New South Wales; L=Sydney; O=My Corporation Ltd.; OU=DevOps; CN=tomcat9.mydomain.com
*  SSL certificate verify result: self signed certificate (18), continuing anyway.
* Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use
* Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed)
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0
} [5 bytes data]
* Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x1387050)
} [5 bytes data]
> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8443
> User-Agent: curl/7.48.0
> Accept: */*
>
{ [5 bytes data]
* Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS updated)!
} [5 bytes data]
< HTTP/2.0 200
< content-type:text/html;charset=UTF-8
< date:Mon, 04 Apr 2016 02:21:07 GMT
<
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact
igorc@sl01:~$

in which case the server sends the RSA type (notice the different start and expire dates) and agrees on RSA cipher instead of ECDSA, changes the cipher from ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 to ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384. In both cases we can see HTTP/2 connection being established.

External_resources:

Share on

Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn

Igor Cicimov

Tomcat9, ECDSA/ECC (Elliptic Curve) Certificates and HTTP/2

Setup

OpenSSL

Java8

Tomcat9

Installation

TC-Native

Config and SSL setup

Testing

CuRL

External_resources:

Share on

Leave a Comment

You May Also Enjoy

Automated SSL Certificates management with HAProxy, Consul and Lets Encrypt on AWS

Lets Encrypt and DANE

MySQL SSL and client certificates authentication

Secure Nginx with Naxsi, SSL, GeoIP and Google Page Speed modules on Debian/Ubuntu