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irbk's avatar
irbk
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Sep 28, 2023

SSL issues with new setup

We are doing our actual implmentation of the F5 BigIP LTM VM version 17.1.03 (build 0.0.4).  It's a little bit complcated because we are trying to load balance an application (Microsoft Dynamics Navision 2018) and not just HTTP or HTTPS traffic.  However, for initial testing, one of our servers in the pool being load balanced will at least show an IIS welcome page so I'm testing by just using HTTP/HTTPS.  I have my nodes set up in my pool and I've currently only have the 1 node active that gives an IIS welcome page (the other just gives an error).  I have our wildcard certificate imported and set as the "SSL Profile (Client)" within my virtual server for 443.   If I go directly to http://msnav01.domain.com I get the IIS welcome page.  If I go to http://bigip.domain.com I get the IIS welcome page.  If I go directly to https://msnav01.domain.com I get the IIS wecome page.  If I go to https://bigip.domain.com I eventually get a "site can't be reached" with "err_connection_reset" message.  Checking the LTM log gives me a less-than-useful "SSL Handchange failed" error message and even with the logging turned up I'm not getting much more uesful info
Sep 27 16:53:07 BigIP.domain.com info tmm[3124]: 01dd0002:6: /Common/Wildcard23-24: SSL Handshake details for TCP <client IP>:33343 -> <virtual server IP>:443 entity: server SID: <server sid here> version: TLSv1.2 cipher-suite: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 key-exchange: 333 bytes client-cert-sha1: N/A server-cert-sha1: N/A mutual-authentication: false
I've looked at a lot of different articles but nothing has solved the issue or even helped me move forward.  I've tried turning off the "Generic Alert", setting the Cashe size to 0, turning up the logging to debug, etc.  I'm at a loss and just not sure where to go next.  I'm positive that the issue is something with the cert or the implmentation of the cert, just not sure where to go next.

Thanks in advance!

19 Replies

  • irbk Would you mind sharing the virtual server configuration and any associated configuration such as SSL profile, SSL cert information, and pool member configuration. Based on your explanation the F5 shouldn't have any reason it would work for 1 domain and not the other if the SSL cert is a wildcard for *.domain.com because that includes all FQDNs mentioned. I would recommend running the following tcpdump to see if it provides any additional information.

    tcpdump -nni 0.0:nnp host <virtual_server_IP> -w /shared/tmp/ssl_tshoot.pcap

    Once you have run your test you can cancel the tcpdump and it should be saved in /shared/tmp/ as ssl_tshoot.pcap. You can copy the pcap off the F5 and open it up in wireshark to see if you can find anything to explain the SSL handshake issue.

    • irbk Go into the CLI and run a "list ltm virtual <virtual_server_name>" and similar commands can be run for each other the other configuration options. To see the other options under "list ltm" you should be able to use the question mark to narrow it down to other pieces of configuration.

      • irbk's avatar
        irbk
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        Ok, I'm not really a linux guy but I'll do my best!

  • ltm virtual BigIP_443 {
    creation-time 2023-09-26:15:10:23
    destination <VS IP>:https
    ip-protocol tcp
    last-modified-time 2023-09-28:09:52:29
    mask 255.255.255.255
    persist {
    source_addr {
    default yes
    }
    }
    pool Nav_Pool_443
    profiles {
    LC-http { }
    LC-oneconnect { }
    LC-tcp-lan { }
    Modified_Wildcard {
    context clientside
    }
    Modified_serverssl {
    context serverside
    }
    analytics { }
    tcp-analytics { }
    }
    serverssl-use-sni disabled
    source 0.0.0.0/0
    source-address-translation {
    pool BigIP-Nav
    type snat
    }
    translate-address enabled
    translate-port enabled
    vs-index 3
    }

    The above was just a configuration I was playing around trying to get something like just SSL Passthrough to work.  I think the end goal is the SSL Bridging because you get better traffic analysis and load balancing or something like that.  
    This is what the profile was before I started just trying stuff this am.

    ltm virtual BigIP-Nav_443 {
    creation-time 2023-09-26:15:10:23
    destination <VS IP>:https
    ip-protocol tcp
    last-modified-time 2023-09-28:11:01:52
    mask 255.255.255.255
    persist {
    source_addr {
    default yes
    }
    }
    pool Nav_Pool_443
    profiles {
    LC-http { }
    LC-oneconnect { }
    LC-tcp-lan { }
    Wildcard23-24 {
    context clientside
    }
    analytics { }
    tcp-analytics { }
    }
    serverssl-use-sni disabled
    source 0.0.0.0/0
    source-address-translation {
    pool BigIP-Nav
    type snat
    }
    translate-address enabled
    translate-port enabled
    vs-index 3
    }

    Here is the SSL profile

    ltm profile client-ssl Wildcard23-24 {
    app-service none
    cert-key-chain {
    WildCard23-24_0 {
    cert WildCard23-24
    key WildCard23-24
    passphrase <encrypted>
    }
    }
    defaults-from clientssl
    inherit-ca-certkeychain true
    inherit-certkeychain false
    log-ssl-c3d-events debug
    log-ssl-client-authentication-events debug
    log-ssl-forward-proxy-events debug
    log-ssl-handshake-events debug
    }

    And here is the pool

    ltm pool Nav_Pool_443 {
    load-balancing-mode predictive-member
    members {
    Nav01:https {
    address <IP>
    session monitor-enabled
    state up
    }
    Nav02:https {
    address <IP>
    session monitor-enabled
    state up
    }
    }
    monitor https
    }

    Thanks again!

    • irbk Based on the second virtual server configuration, I see that you are passing decrypted traffic to the servers on 443. Did you configure the servers to receive decrypted traffic on 443 because by default they should not allow that? Now SSL bridging is nice but not necessary and completely depends on your security stance and capabilities of the receiving pool members and if they can perform all application functions over HTTP and not HTTPS. If it's not required I would stick with SSL termination at the F5 and passing decrypted traffic to the servers.

      • irbk's avatar
        irbk
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        No, that shouldn't be right.  The servers have to have encrypted traffic, they aren't configured to recive it otherwise.  What setting requres changing?

        Actually, the servers arn't even going to be receiving on 443 in the end, this is just how I'm testing to get the certificate issue squared away but the servers do need to recieve encrypted traffic so either the BigIP needs to do a passthrough or we need to setup the SSL Bridging (which I believe is the prefered option for several reasons).

  • I didn't know if you might want the profiles as well listed in the VS, so here you go

    ltm profile http LC-http {
    app-service none
    defaults-from http
    insert-xforwarded-for enabled
    proxy-type reverse
    }

    ltm profile one-connect LC-oneconnect {
    app-service none
    defaults-from oneconnect
    source-mask 255.255.255.255
    }

    ltm profile tcp LC-tcp-lan {
    app-service none
    defaults-from f5-tcp-lan
    idle-timeout 28800
    }

    Yes, that's a really high idle timeout but it was put there becuase people will run reports that run for like 8 hours and we didn't want to system timing them out while a report was running.  I'm not sure if it's necessary but before we can test that we need to get the SSL part working first.

  • posting the TCPdump is a little bit more tricky.  I think this may be the best way

    • Looking at the tcpdump it is clear that your problem is that the serverside connection is in cleartext.

      It is the job of a serverside ssl profile to make sure that is uses TLS on the connection towards the server (not matter the port number), so that seem to be missing.

       

      • irbk's avatar
        irbk
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        Replied to my own reply so things ended up out of order, deleted this comment and added it to the above reply since I can't seem to just "delete" a reply.