Intro
Sometimes everything is there in place, ready to be used, but you just have to either mistakenly try it, or learn it works by reading about it, because it may be counter-intuitive. Such is the case with Server Name Indication. I thought I knew enough about https to “know” that you can only have one key/certificate for a single IP address. That CERT can be a SAN (subject alternative name) CERT covering multiple names, but you only get one shot at getting your certificate right. Or so I thought. Turns out I was dead wrong.
Some details
Well, SNI guess is a protocol extension to https. You know I always wondered why in proxy server logs it was able to log the domain name? How would it know that if the http protocol conversation is all encrypted? Maybe it’s SNI at work.
Who supports it?
Since this is an extension it has to be supported by both server and browser. It is. Apache24 supports it. IE, Firefox and Chrome support it. Even my venerable curl supports it! What does not support it, right out of the box, is openssl. The openssl s_client command fetches a site’s certificate, but as I found the hard way, you need to add the -servername switch to tell it which certificate you want to examine, i.e., to force it to use SNI.
This is mainly used by big hosting companies so they can easily and flexibly cram lots of web sites onto a single IP, but us small-time self-hosted sites benefit as well. I host a few sites for friends after all.
Testing methodology
This is pretty simple. I have a couple different virtual servers. I set each up with a completely different certificate in my apache virtual server setups. Then I accessed them by name like usual. Each showed me their own, proper, certificate. That’s it! So this is more than theoretical for me. I’ve already begun to use it.
Enterprise usage
F5 BigIP supports this protocol as well, of course. This article describes how to set it up. But it looks limited to only one server name per certificate, which will be inadequate if there are SAN certificates.
Conclusion
https using Server Name Indication allows to run multiple virtual servers, each with its own unique certificate, on a single IP address.
References and related
I get my certificates for free using the acme.sh interface to Let’s Encrypt
I’ve written some about apache 2.4 in this post
I don’t think Server Name Indication is explained very well anywhere that I’ve seen. The best dewscription I’ve found is that F5 Devcentral article: https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/ssl-profiles-part-7-server-name-indication
RFC 4366 is the spec describing Server Name Indication.
My favorite openssl commands are listed in this blog post.
SNI is considered insecure because the hostname is sent in plaintext. encrypted SNI is the proposal to address that. Here’s a good write-up about that: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/09/26/finally-a-fix-for-the-encrypted-webs-achilles-heel/?utm_source=Naked+Security+-+Sophos+List&utm_campaign=27caad8932-Naked+Security+daily+news+email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_31623bb782-27caad8932-418487137