Use Reverse Proxy on NGINX for Wildcard SSL on Separate Server

Question

Is it possible to use the NGINX reverse proxy, only for SSL certification?

e.g. devconfluence6.mycompany.com > redir to proxy.mycompany.com (SSL) > (NON SSL) http://devconfluence6.mycompany.com:8090

Where the user will see devconfluence6.mycompany.com - which would be secure to the proxy, but plaintext between proxy and the confluence server?

Currently it works from proxy.mycompany.com - which redirects me to devconfluence6.mycompany.com, and displays proxy.mycompany.com in the browser.

My Confluence Connector:

NGINX Config:

server {
 # SSL configuration
 #
 listen 443 ssl;
 server_name devconfluence6.mycompany.com;

#ssl on;
 ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/wildcard.mycompany.com.crt;
 ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/wildcard.mycompany.com.key;

ssl_session_timeout 5m;

ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
 ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS';
 ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

location / {
 client_max_body_size 100m;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_pass http://devconfluence6.mycompany.com:8090;
 }
 location /synchrony {
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_pass http://devconfluence6.mycompany.com:8091/synchrony;
 proxy_http_version 1.1;
 proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
 proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
 }
}

Thanks in advance!

Roman Collyer · Answer

Hi JP, apologies - I've amended the question to the correct hostnames, it's

devconfluence6.mycompany.com

My understanding of this has grown, whereas I originally thought that the confluence host redirects to the proxy, and back again via the connector, making it secure, it is in-fact handled by the proxy.

So in this instance I've added a new DNS entry "devconfluence.mycompany.com" which points to the proxy. Proxy redirects this to port 443, and then the reverse proxy connector is configured to show

proxyName="devconfluence.mycompany.com"

Which resolved the problem, and now my URL bar shows secured connection to devconfluence.mycompany.com

I've further secured my connection by restricting the firewall to connect to the proxy and back, so that although the connection is insecure from the proxy, (hopefully) the http requests can not be observed.

JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_ · Answer

Hi Roman,

it would be great, if you use the correct domain names in your example. What is devconfluence6.mycompany.com? I guess the internal name of the Confluence server, right? So which server is named confluence.mycompany.com? The proxy (which would be correct) or the Confluence server (which is already named devconfluence6.mycompany.com...)

Anyway, with this configuration the connection between the proxy & the Confluence server is not encrypted as you don't terminate & configure SSL on the Confluence server.

Best

JP