Transport Layer Seccurity, TLSIntroduction Up until now, we have discussed the straight forward configuration of OpenLDAP, with some advanced features such as ACLs. This does not however, deal with the fact that the network transmissions are still in plain text. This is where Transport Layer Security (TLS) comes in. OpenLDAP clients and servers are capable of using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) framework to provide integrity and confidentiality protections in accordance with - RFC2830; Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): Extension for Transport Layer Security. TLS uses X.509 certificates. All servers are required to have valid certificates, whereas client certificates are optional. We will only be discussing server certificates. The DN of a server certificate must use the CN attribute to name the server, and the CN must carry the server's fully qualified domain name (FQDN). Additional alias names and wildcards may be present in the subjectAltName certificate extension. More details on server certificate names are in RFC2830. We will discuss this more in the next sections. Transport Layer Seccurity, TLSConfiguring Now on to the good bit. In order to create the relevant certificates, we need to become our own Certificate Authority (CA). We could however, get our generated server certificate signed by proper CAs, like Thawte and VeriSign, which you pay for, or the free ones, via CAcert This is necessary, so we can sign the server certificate. We will be using the OpenSSL The downside to making our own CA, is that the certificate is not automatically recognised by clients, like the commercial ones are. software for this, which is included with every great Linux distribution. TLS is used for many types of servers, but the instructionsFor information straight from the horses mouth, please visit - http://www.openssl.org/docs/HOWTO/; the main OpenSSL site. presented here, are tailored for &OL;. The Common Name (CN), if the following example, MUST be the fully qualified domain name (fqdn) of your ldap server. First we need to generate the CA: &rootprompt; mkdir myCA Move into that directory: &rootprompt; cd myCA Now generate the CA:Your CA.pl or CA.sh might not be in the same location as mine is, you can find it by using the locate command, i.e. locate CA.pl. If the command complains about the database being too old, run updatedb as root to update it. &rootprompt; /usr/share/ssl/misc/CA.pl -newca CA certificate filename (or enter to create) Making CA certificate ... Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key .......................++++++ .............................++++++ writing new private key to './demoCA/private/cakey.pem' Enter PEM pass phrase: Verifying - Enter PEM pass phrase: ----- You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:AU State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:NSW Locality Name (eg, city) []:Sydney Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Abmas Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:ldap.abmas.biz Email Address []:support@abmas.biz Now, there are some things to note here. You MUST remember the password, as we will need it to sign the server certificate.. The Common Name (CN), MUST be the fully qualified domain name (fqdn) of your ldap server. Now we need to generate the server certificate: &rootprompt; openssl req -new -nodes -keyout newreq.pem -out newreq.pem Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key .............++++++ ........................................................++++++ writing new private key to 'newreq.pem' ----- You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:AU State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:NSW Locality Name (eg, city) []:Sydney Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Abmas Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:ldap.abmas.biz Email Address []:support@abmas.biz Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []: Again, there are some things to note here. You should NOT enter a password. The Common Name (CN), MUST be the fully qualified domain name (fqdn) of your ldap server. Now, we sign the certificate with the new CA: &rootprompt; /usr/share/ssl/misc/CA.pl -sign Using configuration from /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf Enter pass phrase for ./demoCA/private/cakey.pem: Check that the request matches the signature Signature ok Certificate Details: Serial Number: 1 (0x1) Validity Not Before: Mar 6 18:22:26 2005 EDT Not After : Mar 6 18:22:26 2006 EDT Subject: countryName = AU stateOrProvinceName = NSW localityName = Sydney organizationName = Abmas organizationalUnitName = IT commonName = ldap.abmas.biz emailAddress = support@abmas.biz X509v3 extensions: X509v3 Basic Constraints: CA:FALSE Netscape Comment: OpenSSL Generated Certificate X509v3 Subject Key Identifier: F7:84:87:25:C4:E8:46:6D:0F:47:27:91:F0:16:E0:86:6A:EE:A3:CE X509v3 Authority Key Identifier: keyid:27:44:63:3A:CB:09:DC:B1:FF:32:CC:93:23:A4:F1:B4:D5:F0:7E:CC DirName:/C=AU/ST=NSW/L=Sydney/O=Abmas/OU=IT/CN=ldap.abmas.biz/emailAddress=support@abmas.biz serial:00 Certificate is to be certified until Mar 6 18:22:26 2006 EDT (365 days) Sign the certificate? [y/n]:y 1 out of 1 certificate requests certified, commit? [y/n]y Write out database with 1 new entries Data Base Updated Signed certificate is in newcert.pem That completes the server certificate generation. Now we need to copy the certificates to the right configuration directories, rename them at the same time for convenience, change the ownership and finally the permissions: &rootprompt; cp demoCA/cacert.pem /etc/openldap/ &rootprompt; cp newcert.pem /etc/openldap/servercrt.pem &rootprompt; cp newreq.pem /etc/openldap/serverkey.pem &rootprompt; chown ldap.ldap /etc/openldap/*.pem &rootprompt; chmod 640 /etc/openldap/cacert.pem; chmod 600 /etc/openldap/serverkey.pem Now we just need to add these locations to slapd.conf, anywhere before the database declaration as shown here: TLSCertificateFile /etc/openldap/servercrt.pem TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/openldap/serverkey.pem TLSCACertificateFile /etc/openldap/cacert.pem Here is the declaration and ldap.conf: ldap.conf TLS_CACERT /etc/openldap/cacert.pem That's all there is to it. Now on to Transport Layer Seccurity, TLSTesting This is the easy part. Restart the server: &rootprompt; /etc/init.d/ldap restart Stopping slapd: [ OK ] Checking configuration files for slapd: config file testing succeeded Starting slapd: [ OK ] Then, using ldapsearch, test an anonymous search with the -ZZSee man ldapsearch option: &rootprompt; ldapsearch -x -b "dc=ldap,dc=abmas,dc=biz" -H 'ldap://ldap.abmas.biz:389' -ZZ Your results should be the same as before you restarted the server, for example: &rootprompt; ldapsearch -x -b "dc=ldap,dc=abmas,dc=biz" \ -H 'ldap://ldap.abmas.biz:389' -ZZ # extended LDIF # # LDAPv3 # base <> with scope sub # filter: (objectclass=*) # requesting: ALL # # abmas.biz dn: dc=ldap,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: dcObject objectClass: organization o: Abmas dc: abmas # Manager, ldap.abmas.biz dn: cn=Manager,dc=ldap,dc=abmas,dc=biz objectClass: organizationalRole cn: Manager # ABMAS, abmas.biz dn: sambaDomainName=ABMAS,dc=ldap,dc=abmas,dc=biz sambaDomainName: ABMAS sambaSID: S-1-5-21-238355452-1056757430-1592208922 sambaAlgorithmicRidBase: 1000 objectClass: sambaDomain sambaNextUserRid: 67109862 sambaNextGroupRid: 67109863 If you have any problems, please read Transport Layer Seccurity, TLSTroubleshooting The most common error when configuring TLS, as I have already mentioned numerous times, is that the Common Name (CN) you entered in is NOT the Full Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of your ldap server. Other errors could be that you have a typo somewhere in your ldapsearch command, or that your have the wrong permissions on the servercrt.pem and cacert.pem files. They should be set with chmod 640, as per . For anything else, it's best to read through your ldap logfile or join the &OL; mailing list.