ruby / ruby/openssl

Can we get DEBUG loggin from the OpenSSL library?

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Dominant language
C
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276
Forks
200
Avg merge
1d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
7

Description

Hi,

Problem

As a developer I would like to see (DEBUG) logging from OpenSSL. We have a Ruby application that connects to Amazon Cloudfront to retrieve a file. This runs through a network outside of our control containing NAT gateways, proxies, etc.

This works 99% of the time, but Intermittently we get a self signed certificate error:

OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError (SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 
peeraddr=18.66.171.65:443 state=error: certificate verify failed 
(self signed certificate in certificate chain))

But it doesn't show WHICH certificate (or subject, fignerprint, ...) is being seen.

Question / Request
Ideally we would have a ruby OpenSSL flag that instructs OpenSSL to do its (DEBUG) logging so we can get this information. I can see OpenSSL is logging the desired information in:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/6288aa440c1ba111eaf52cf79659a25329205022/crypto/x509/t_x509.c#L484-L501

Is it possible to get the Ruby app to log this information?

I have found OpenSSL::debug=true, but this only seems to trigger debug logging done in this Ruby Gem.

In java we have -Djava.net.debug=ssl, but I realize that is not using OpenSSL underneath.

Alternative
I have found a way to get Ruby to log the self-signed certificate that is being seen in Ruby via https://github.com/mislav/ssl-tools/blob/master/doctor.rb. Something along these lines, where the store_context contains the failed certificat:

  http.verify_callback = lambda { |verify_ok, store_context|
    if !verify_ok
      failed_cert = store_context.current_cert
      failed_cert_reason = "%d: %s" % [ store_context.error, store_context.error_string ]
    end
    verify_ok
  }

This is not ideal as it requires code changes in our Ruby apps, which is using httparty as a wrapper. Also we would be replicating logging that is already done by OpenSSL.

The fact that this SSL Docter script exists seems to confirm there is no Ruby OpenSSL::xxx flag to achieve this?

Would it be possible to implement such a flag? Is there an alternative way to achieve the same?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the OpenSSL debug output referenced in crypto/x509/t_x509.c and compare it with Ruby's OpenSSL::debug behavior. Review the verify_callback and store_context example, then determine whether a Ruby-exposed flag can provide equivalent certificate details without application-level callbacks. Done means the proposed interface and its expected logging behavior are defined and tested.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, ruby
Domain
cryptography, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
28/100

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