This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, “OpenSSL client and server from scratch, part 2.” In the previous two posts, we made a trivial little HTTP client and a trivial little HTTP server. Today we’ll upgrade our server to use HTTP-over-TLS, a.k.a. HTTPS.

SSL_CTX versus SSL

TLS is a stateful protocol. Each TLS connection needs to keep track of some connection-specific state — like, what symmetric encryption algorithm we’ve agreed upon with the client, and what keys we’re using with it. This state is specific to the connection. OpenSSL stores it in an object of type struct SSL . There are various SSL_foo macros to poke at the innards of an SSL object, but for our purposes we don’t need hardly any of them.

TLS is also a complicated protocol with a lot of awkward human-scale inputs — like, what encryption algorithms we consider acceptably secure, and what certificate we choose to present to connecting clients, and what certificate authorities we trust. These inputs tend to be shared across many individual TLS connections, so OpenSSL factors this state out into an object of type SSL_CTX . Before you can create an SSL connection, you need to create an SSL_CTX context.

auto ctx = my::UniquePtr<SSL_CTX>(SSL_CTX_new(TLS_method()));

(This line uses the my::UniquePtr alias template from part 1.)

The documentation implies that in real code you’d also want to prohibit insecure and deprecated protocol versions by following that line up with something like

SSL_CTX_set_min_proto_version(ctx.get(), TLS1_2_VERSION);

Caveats for OpenSSL 1.0.2

If you’re using a version of OpenSSL prior to 1.1.0, you’ll have to use SSLv23_method() instead of TLS_method() . And SSL_CTX_set_min_proto_version won’t exist, either.

This is also a good time to mention that OpenSSL 1.0.2 (unlike 1.1.0) will not automatically initialize itself the first time you use one of its facilities. Also, its error messages are cryptic integer codes by default; if you want English text in your error messages, you must “load the error strings” as part of your setup. That is, in 1.0.2 you need these lines at the top of main() :

#if OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER < 0x10100000L SSL_library_init(); SSL_load_error_strings(); #endif

I also should mention that OpenSSL 1.0.2 is missing a lot of macros for manipulating BIO_METHOD s. You probably ran into this when you tried to use part 1’s StringBIO . All the functionality is there in 1.0.2; what’s missing are the macros to access it. So what you need is a “polyfill” header for OpenSSL. The best one I’ve found is “openssl_backport.h”, part of the h2o project.

In short, OpenSSL 1.1.0 added a lot of minor conveniences over OpenSSL 1.0.2. (And I should remark that even 1.1.0 was already end-of-lifed, in September 2019, exactly one year after the release of OpenSSL 1.1.1. So if you’re upgrading in 2020, you should be upgrading to 1.1.1, not 1.1.0.)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled tiny HTTPS server.

Set up the server’s private key and certificate

When a TLS client connects to our server, it’ll want to authenticate that our server really is who we say we are. Say the client is trying to talk to duckduckgo.com — is it really talking to duckduckgo.com , or is it talking to a malicious actor posing as duckduckgo.com ? On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

So how TLS solves this is, the client will demand that the server present a certificate — a certificate of authenticity that says “I certify that any server with public key such-and-such is authorized (by me) to serve data for duckduckgo.com , at least until such-and-such a date. Signed, ….” And then it’s signed (cryptographically) by someone trustworthy — a certificate authority. Typically this is a big company with a name like DigiCert, GlobalSign, or GeoTrust. Anyone who wants to talk TLS must decide for themselves which certificate authorities they’re going to trust as the “roots” in their web of trust. Here is the list of CAs trusted by Mozilla Firefox. If you want to run your own HTTPS website from scratch, and you want random clients to trust that it is who it says it is, you must get a certificate for your site’s domain name, signed by one of these big root CAs (or signed by some “intermediate CA” who holds a slightly different kind of certificate authorizing them to sign certificates, signed by some root CA; or so on).

By the way, when I said “any server with public key such-and-such,” that was shorthand. What I meant in full was: “any server which can prove that it knows the private half of the keypair whose public half is such-and-such.”

We’ll use OpenSSL’s command-line interface to generate a keypair using the P-256 elliptic curve algorithm. (You can do this from C++ too, but that’s out of scope for this post.)

openssl ecparam -genkey -name prime256v1 -noout -out server-private-key.pem openssl ec -in server-private-key.pem -pubout -out server-public-key.pem

And then we’ll create a certificate that says, “I certify that any server with public key server-public-key.pem is authorized (by me) to serve data for duckduckgo.com , at least for the next 30 days. Signed, duckduckgo.com .” (And it’s signed using server-private-key.pem .)

openssl req -new -x509 -sha256 -key server-private-key.pem -subj "/CN=duckduckgo.com" -out server-certificate.pem

Notice that OpenSSL did not complain that we are not actually duckduckgo.com ; it’s happy to create the certificate for us. But if we present that certificate to someone out on the Web, they’ll check the signature and see that this certificate was not signed by anyone they recognize as a CA, so they probably won’t trust what it says. See also “Portia’s Caskets, Explained” (2018-07-06).

Okay, so we have made our keypair and our server certificate. Back in the C++ code of our HTTPS server, we must import these into our SSL_CTX . Unfortunately, OpenSSL doesn’t provide any scalable or secure way to import certificate or key data from memory; it wants everything as paths to disk files. Not the most secure approach in the world; but suitable for our purposes.

auto ctx = my::UniquePtr<SSL_CTX>(SSL_CTX_new(TLS_method())); SSL_CTX_set_min_proto_version(ctx.get(), TLS1_2_VERSION); if (SSL_CTX_use_certificate_file(ctx.get(), "server-certificate.pem", SSL_FILETYPE_PEM) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error loading server certificate"); } if (SSL_CTX_use_PrivateKey_file(ctx.get(), "server-private-key.pem", SSL_FILETYPE_PEM) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error loading server private key"); }

Create an SSL filter BIO for each client connection

Our old server loop looked like this:

while (auto bio = my::accept_new_tcp_connection(accept_bio.get())) { try { std::string request = my::receive_http_message(bio.get()); printf("Got request:

"); printf("%s

", request.c_str()); my::send_http_response(bio.get(), "okay cool

"); } catch (const std::exception& ex) { printf("Worker exited with exception:

%s

", ex.what()); } }

Our new TLS-enabled server loop looks like this:

while (auto bio = my::accept_new_tcp_connection(accept_bio.get())) { bio = std::move(bio) | my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_ssl(ctx.get(), 0)); try { std::string request = my::receive_http_message(bio.get()); printf("Got request:

"); printf("%s

", request.c_str()); my::send_http_response(bio.get(), "okay cool

"); } catch (const std::exception& ex) { printf("Worker exited with exception:

%s

", ex.what()); } }

That’s right — all we have to do is slap an SSL filter BIO in front of our socket BIO, and we’re good to go! OpenSSL’s BIO API really makes this a cinch.

The one thing to really watch out for — and this bit me multiple times during the writing of this series — is that integer 0 argument to BIO_new_ssl . It means “act like a server.” If you put a 1 there instead, it means “act like a client.” The TLS protocol is not symmetrical! If you write 0 when you mean 1 , or 1 when you mean 0 , your code will probably just hang, or error out with some cryptic message if you’re lucky. Be very careful when cutting-and-pasting between examples!

You might think that OpenSSL should provide macros #define NEW_SSL_CLIENT 1 and #define NEW_SSL_SERVER 0 . Yeah, it probably should! But it doesn’t.

Putting it all together, and testing

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the complete code for our very simple C++14 HTTPS server.

As before, you can test the server program using curl , like this:

curl https://localhost:8080/

But look what happens when we run that line!

$ curl https://localhost:8080/ curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html [...]

Aha! Our server is presenting a certificate that is not trusted by curl (which is to say, it’s not trusted by the global “trust store” installed on our machine; on OSX, Apple stores trusted certs as part of what it calls your “keychain”). Let’s tell curl to expect that certificate and trust it:

$ curl --cacert server-certificate.pem https://localhost:8080/ curl: (51) SSL: certificate subject name 'duckduckgo.com' does not match target host name 'localhost'

Oh, right, we generated a certificate for duckduckgo.com . Let’s tell curl to connect to duckduckgo.com … but also tell it that for our purposes, duckduckgo.com lives right here on localhost.

$ curl --cacert server-certificate.pem --resolve duckduckgo.com:8080:127.0.0.1 https://duckduckgo.com:8080/ okay cool

Nifty!

Godbolt Compiler Explorer doesn’t support running programs that do networking, but you can see the code on Godbolt here anyway.

#include <memory> #include <signal.h> #include <stdexcept> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <string> #include <unistd.h> #include <vector> #include <openssl/bio.h> #include <openssl/err.h> #include <openssl/ssl.h> namespace my { template<class T> struct DeleterOf; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO> { void operator()(BIO *p) const { BIO_free_all(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO_METHOD> { void operator()(BIO_METHOD *p) const { BIO_meth_free(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<SSL_CTX> { void operator()(SSL_CTX *p) const { SSL_CTX_free(p); } }; template<class OpenSSLType> using UniquePtr = std::unique_ptr<OpenSSLType, DeleterOf<OpenSSLType>>; my::UniquePtr<BIO> operator|(my::UniquePtr<BIO> lower, my::UniquePtr<BIO> upper) { BIO_push(upper.get(), lower.release()); return upper; } class StringBIO { std::string str_; my::UniquePtr<BIO_METHOD> methods_; my::UniquePtr<BIO> bio_; public: StringBIO(StringBIO&&) = delete; StringBIO& operator=(StringBIO&&) = delete; explicit StringBIO() { methods_.reset(BIO_meth_new(BIO_TYPE_SOURCE_SINK, "StringBIO")); if (methods_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_meth_new"); } BIO_meth_set_write(methods_.get(), [](BIO *bio, const char *data, int len) -> int { std::string *str = reinterpret_cast<std::string*>(BIO_get_data(bio)); str->append(data, len); return len; }); bio_.reset(BIO_new(methods_.get())); if (bio_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_new"); } BIO_set_data(bio_.get(), &str_); BIO_set_init(bio_.get(), 1); } BIO *bio() { return bio_.get(); } std::string str() && { return std::move(str_); } }; [[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_exit(const char *message) { fprintf(stderr, "%s

", message); ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); exit(1); } [[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_throw(const char *message) { my::StringBIO bio; ERR_print_errors(bio.bio()); throw std::runtime_error(std::string(message) + "

" + std::move(bio).str()); } std::string receive_some_data(BIO *bio) { char buffer[1024]; int len = BIO_read(bio, buffer, sizeof(buffer)); if (len < 0) { my::print_errors_and_throw("error in BIO_read"); } else if (len > 0) { return std::string(buffer, len); } else if (BIO_should_retry(bio)) { return receive_some_data(bio); } else { my::print_errors_and_throw("empty BIO_read"); } } std::vector<std::string> split_headers(const std::string& text) { std::vector<std::string> lines; const char *start = text.c_str(); while (const char *end = strstr(start, "\r

")) { lines.push_back(std::string(start, end)); start = end + 2; } return lines; } std::string receive_http_message(BIO *bio) { std::string headers = my::receive_some_data(bio); char *end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); while (end_of_headers == nullptr) { headers += my::receive_some_data(bio); end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); } std::string body = std::string(end_of_headers+4, &headers[headers.size()]); headers.resize(end_of_headers+2 - &headers[0]); size_t content_length = 0; for (const std::string& line : my::split_headers(headers)) { if (const char *colon = strchr(line.c_str(), ':')) { auto header_name = std::string(&line[0], colon); if (header_name == "Content-Length") { content_length = std::stoul(colon+1); } } } while (body.size() < content_length) { body += my::receive_some_data(bio); } return headers + "\r

" + body; } void send_http_response(BIO *bio, const std::string& body) { std::string response = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r

"; response += "Content-Length: " + std::to_string(body.size()) + "\r

"; response += "\r

"; BIO_write(bio, response.data(), response.size()); BIO_write(bio, body.data(), body.size()); BIO_flush(bio); } my::UniquePtr<BIO> accept_new_tcp_connection(BIO *accept_bio) { if (BIO_do_accept(accept_bio) <= 0) { return nullptr; } return my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_pop(accept_bio)); } } // namespace my int main() { #if OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER < 0x10100000L SSL_library_init(); SSL_load_error_strings(); auto ctx = my::UniquePtr<SSL_CTX>(SSL_CTX_new(SSLv23_method())); #else auto ctx = my::UniquePtr<SSL_CTX>(SSL_CTX_new(TLS_method())); SSL_CTX_set_min_proto_version(ctx.get(), TLS1_2_VERSION); #endif if (SSL_CTX_use_certificate_file(ctx.get(), "server-certificate.pem", SSL_FILETYPE_PEM) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error loading server certificate"); } if (SSL_CTX_use_PrivateKey_file(ctx.get(), "server-private-key.pem", SSL_FILETYPE_PEM) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error loading server private key"); } auto accept_bio = my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_accept("8080")); if (BIO_do_accept(accept_bio.get()) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_do_accept (binding to port 8080)"); } static auto shutdown_the_socket = [fd = BIO_get_fd(accept_bio.get(), nullptr)]() { close(fd); }; signal(SIGINT, [](int) { shutdown_the_socket(); }); while (auto bio = my::accept_new_tcp_connection(accept_bio.get())) { bio = std::move(bio) | my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_ssl(ctx.get(), 0)) ; try { std::string request = my::receive_http_message(bio.get()); printf("Got request:

"); printf("%s

", request.c_str()); my::send_http_response(bio.get(), "okay cool

"); } catch (const std::exception& ex) { printf("Worker exited with exception:

%s

", ex.what()); } } printf("

Clean exit!

"); }

This series continues with “OpenSSL client and server from scratch, part 4.”