I'd like to know how I can make socket connection to a server with
PHP. The client (PHP script) makes the connection and than sends it's
certificate to the server. The server than checks this certificate and
decides if the connection is allowed and what rights the client has.
BTW: The server and the client both have the private key and the
certificate of the client.
Making an unencrypted socket connection isn't a really big problem:
$fp = $fsockopen(hostname, port, $errno, $errstr, 10);
fputs ($fp, "Hello, who are you?");
print fgets($fp, 8096);
fclose($fp);
But now i need to know how to get a secure version of the socket
connection described above.
I tried using cURL but it only supports HTTPS connections and no
'normal' socket connections.
To round it up: how do i make a SSL socket connection with PHP in which the
client acknowledges it's identity with it's certificate and key?
Thanks in advance,
Maarten Engelen |
Request for Question Clarification by
joseleon-ga
on
11 Sep 2002 05:49 PDT
Hello:
I supose you know that if you don't use the cURL library and use
just sockets you will need to deal with the HTTP protocol and do it
all by yourself.
Look at this article:
How can PHP make a SSL encrypted post to a transaction server?
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/697/fid/49
And tell me what do you think.
Best Regards.
|
Clarification of Question by
arcadis-ga
on
11 Sep 2002 06:06 PDT
Well, the thing is that the server is no HTTP server. It accepts
commands in textual form and than returns data based on the command.
So the thing is that I want a connection _without_ any HTTP protocols.
cURL is very nice, but it can't make any 'clean' socket connections
like fsockopen().
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Request for Question Clarification by
joseleon-ga
on
11 Sep 2002 09:39 PDT
Hello:
What kind of server are you going to use?, I ask this because there
is nothing special opening SSL connections with fsockopen but handle
certificates, which is specific to the HTTP protocol over SSL, so if
you are not going to use an HTTP server, the answer I was thinking
it's wrong.
fsockopen
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fsockopen.php
"As of PHP 4.3.0, if you have compiled in OpenSSL support, you may
prefix the hostname with either 'ssl://' or 'tls://' to use an SSL or
TLS client connection over TCP/IP to connect to the remote host."
Regards.
|
Clarification of Question by
arcadis-ga
on
11 Sep 2002 10:10 PDT
I think the best way to get the actual problem clear is to give some
more background info on the problem.
The server is from a product called FreeVSD. This is an open source
project that handles virtual servers. When you connect to the
non-secure server with a normal socket connection than i can send
commands like when you're connecting to a POP3 server (text based,
like telnet).
freevsd also has a secure server. This server uses openssl to secure
the connection.
One the server I make a Certificate Authority. Than i make a
certificate/key pair for every user that should have access to the
system. The hostserver _and_ the client both have the same
certificate/key pair.
The client connects to the server and for as far as I can see the
client sends its certificate to the server to verify it's identity.
Than the key and cert are used to encrypt the data. You don't have to
type any passwords to authenticate as this is all done by checking the
certificate.
The problem is that there is a commercial product that does work, but
it is zend encoded so i can't figure out how it works. It works on any
PHP version (version 4.0.6) and up so i figured that there should be
some way to get this secure SSL connection thing working.
I'm sorry I can't be any clearer. My knowledge of OpenSSL is not very
good and after scanning the source code of the administration utility
(written in C) for the secure server this is what I could make out of
it.
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Request for Question Clarification by
joseleon-ga
on
12 Sep 2002 05:42 PDT
Hello:
Well, after review all the information, I think this question must
be divided in two parts:
Part I: How to connect a socket using SSL?
Answer: Using fsockopen with ssl://
fsockopen
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fsockopen.php
"As of PHP 4.3.0, if you have compiled in OpenSSL support, you may
prefix the hostname with either 'ssl://' or 'tls://' to use an SSL or
TLS client connection over TCP/IP to connect to the remote host."
In HTTP protocol, when you connect to an HTTP server over SSL, the
server can ask for a certificate, you send it, it asks for a key to
decrypt it, you send it and the server checks if the certificate is
valid before allow that connection.
Part II: How can I manage a FreeVSD server from PHP over SSL?
Answer: I can't answer this question, because it implies to implement
the VSDADM protocol, the protocol FreeVSD uses for communication.
Remote Administration Protocol
http://www.freevsd.org/aboutvsd/rap.phtml
And I think this is a huge task.
If you want I could post an answer to the Part I, but I suggest you to
save your money and ask Part II as a new question and cancel this one.
I hope you find useful my comments.
Regards.
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Clarification of Question by
arcadis-ga
on
12 Sep 2002 08:31 PDT
PART II is already solved. I wrote a parser script for the freevsd
protocol, so that isn't the problem.
The process of connecting to the server and making the connection ssl
secured gives me the headache.
As fsockopen only supports ssl from php version 4.3.0 and up this
isn't a real option (not for me at least). As i wrote earlier: I know
of a script that does the job with php version 4.0.6 an up.
This may be a bit silly (asking for something I saw before), but as
the script i'm talking about is encoded I can't get to the code they
used for the connection.
I will keep the question open for some days for anyone who knows an
answer to this problem.
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Request for Question Clarification by
joseleon-ga
on
12 Sep 2002 13:08 PDT
Hello:
Well, if you cannot use a PHP version greater than 4.3.0, I'm sorry,
but I don't know how to connect a socket through SSL, I think you will
need to find someone with a customized PHP distribution which compiles
OpenSSL. Just for curiosity, which PHP version are you using?
Regards.
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Clarification of Question by
arcadis-ga
on
12 Sep 2002 14:40 PDT
The php version I use is 4.2.1 and 4.0.6 (2 different test sytstems)
It doesn't matter you don't know the answer.
Thank you very much for your help,
Maarten
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