SSL decryption and Http redirection

[sunilsadanandan]

Hi,

I am testing SSL decryption and it seems to work fine  except when Http redirection is involved. E.g. when you try to connect to Https://gmail.com , google redirects you to https://www.google.com and it gives me a certificate error because of the hostname in the cert does (www.google.com in this case)not match with the hostname that you are connecting to (gmail.com originally).  Is there some way of working around this ? I am using PANOS 4.0.4.

Regards,

Sunil

[jleung]

Hi Sunil,

Have you tried to access other SSL site? Do you see the cert error?

Even you have been redirected from gmail to www.google.com/mail, our device should self-signed another SSL cert in realtime. I wonder if actually the error will show up even you are accessing other SSL site with SSL decryption enabled as well.

[kkeeton]

I agree sounds like your firewall certificate isn't trusted  If certificates are working should see no error   Another example is going to bankofamerica.com will will redirect to www and redirect to https  Remember with new browsers they also don't like device self signed certificates and you will likely need a pki or 3rd party

[sunilsadanandan]

Hi jleung,

Thanks for the response , I do not get the error when I access the other SSL webpages e.g. https://facebook.com  https://twitter.com, the firewall sigins and I can see it in the details.

The error on IE is as follows when I connect to Https://gmail.com

The security  certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's  address.

The following article says that 3rd party certs cannot be used.

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/message/7870

Regards,

Sunil

[jleung]

Hi Sunil,

I think there maybe something wrong with your cert setting.

For SSL decryption to work, our box need to have either an imported or self generated CA cert. For 4.0.x, you need to go to device -> certificate to generate one. When you generate it, remember to check the box "certificate authority". After that please click on the cert that you have just created and choose "forward trust certificate". Make sure you have chosen "SSL forward proxy" in the option field of the decryption policy. Commit your change.

Now if you go to any of the HTTPS website, you should always see the cert error from the browser, and when click on the cert, you should see it is issued by the PA box.

Remember that we need a CA cert for SSL decryption to function, so that we can always enumerate the original website SSL cert on the fly. It doesn't bind to any websites. The browser will always show the error prompt though the cert cn name and expiry date are valid and matched, because the SSL cert is issued/signed by our box rather than any of the trust CA by Windows/MAC OS.

If you don't want to see the error prompt, you could leverage AD to install all the certs to your corporate PCs, or leverage your corporate CA server (if there is one) to create a subordinate CA cert and import it to PA box.

Using 3rd party signed cert (e.g. bought one from Verisign) can never help you, as those 3rd parties are selling you site cert but not CA cert. And we need CA cert which can sign certs.