topic Re: SSL Decryption in General Topics

SSL Decryption

cpkaiser — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:25:56 GMT

Hello,

We have quite a few students using hotspot shield and other tunneling apps to get around our filter. I've been successful in block a majority of them by blocking the hotspot shield app. However there are still a number of them getting though by creating tunnels on port 443. In this case we would want to do outbound ssl decryption correct? Is there a specific type of certificate required for that or just buy a regular SSL cert.? Would a wildcard certificate work?

Re: SSL Decryption

ssharma — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:31:55 GMT

Hi CPKaiser,

You will need CA on the device. This can be a self signed cert from the PA box itself or if you have PKI infrastucture you can generate a CA from there and import it to Palo Alto device. This way firewall is able to look through SSL traffic as the CA cert would have both public and private key.

Please keep in mind that since this certificate might not be trusted by student browser, they will get an browser error if they try to access SSL sites.

Workaround is to install the certificate in their trusted root store. Hope this helps. Thank you.

Re: SSL Decryption

bat — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:37:29 GMT

Hi cpkaiser

Welcome to forums.

Yes you will need outbound SSL decryption.

You can use any type of certificate that is either CA or subordinate CA. Common name of the certificate does not matter (so it can be wildcard), just the CA which issued the certificate or the certificate itself (if self signed) should be imported in the trusted root store other wise they will get warnings and some websites might not work.

Thanks

Re: SSL Decryption

cpkaiser — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:41:47 GMT

Perfect. Thank you both, that is exactly what I needed.

Re: SSL Decryption

ssharma — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:48:04 GMT

Glad we could help. Thank you.

Re: SSL Decryption

VinceM — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 08:45:36 GMT

Hi,

Just short question, how you tunneled traffic is seem from app point of view ?

Most of case, is seen as unknown.

Then, just block unknown, it's lees intrusive as decryption.

Hope help.