Openssl, enables encrypted communication between client and server. For ecFlow this can be used for user commands.

To enable this for ecflow 4, please ensure you build ecFlow with '-DENABLE_SSL'. You will need to ensure that open ssl is installed on your system.

This enabled by default for ecflow 5, if the ssl libraries are found on the system.

ecflow_client --version # look for a string openssl
ecflow_server --version # look for a string openssl

In order to use openssl, we need set up some certificates. (These will be self signed certificates, rather than a certificate authority).

The ecFlow client and server, will look for the certificates in  $HOME/.ecflowrc/ssl directory.

ecFlow server expects the following files in : $HOME/.ecflowrc/ssl

• dh1024.pem
• server.crt
• server.key
• server.passwd (optional) if this exists it must contain the pass phrase used to create server.key.

ecFlow client expects the following files in : $HOME/.ecflowrc/ssl

• server.crt ( this must be the same as server)

The following steps, show you how to create these files:

• Generate a password protected private key. This will request a pass phrase.

  This key is a 1024 bit RSA key which is encrypted using Triple-DES and stored in a PEM format so that it is readable as ASCII text

  openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

  
  

• If you want additional security. Create a file called 'server.passwd' and  add the pass phrase to the file.  Then set the file permission so that file is only readable by the server process.

  Or you can choose to remove password requirement. In that case we don't need server.passwd file.

  cp server.key server.key.secure openssl rsa -in server.key.secure -out server.key

  
  

• Sign certificate with private key (self signed certificate).  Generate Certificate Signing Request(CSR). 

  This will prompt with a number of questions. However please ensure 'common name' matches the host where your server is going to run.

  
  

  openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

  
  

• generate a self signed certificate CRT, by using the CSR and private key.

  openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

  
  

• Generate dhparam file. ecFlow expects 1024 key.

  openssl dhparam -out dh1024.pem 1024