Securing Flex App on Shared Hosting - php

I'm not an expert and don't want to make a mistake, so please forgive me if the answer is obvious (better safe than sorry).
I finished a Flex app using FB4.5 and uploaded and tested it fine to a shared host. I'm now in the process of securing the app using https, but have landed in a quagmire.
First:
I forced the load of all pages to https with .htaccess so that the Flex app loads with SSL. Problem is that I get a connection failed ('BadVersion') when the app makes a data service call using the gateway.php file because of the .htaccess force (it is looking for http rather than https). I believe I can hardcode the https path in the Flash Builder class file, but I don't want prevent the app from working on my dev machine either. Any thoughts here?
Also, even if the gateway.php file is called using SSL, will the following calls to the PHP files containing the actual SQL queries fail because of the forced SSL by the .htaccess directives.
Second:
Instead of using .htaccess, I have also successfully used PHP to secure the initial launch of the app with a https redirect statement in the beginning. This allows the app to work, calling the gateway.php file fine because it isn't forcing https on everything. BUT, this defeats the purpose of trying to get everything to be encrypted.
Third:
Is is it necessary to have the gateway.php file launched on SSL because of transmitting in binary AMF?
Thoughts? Explanations? Things I'm missing. Suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

If your AMF calls are going over HTTPS, then you need to use a SecureAMFChannel rather than a vanilla AMFChannel.
Typcially this is configured either in the client, where you have declared your RemoteObject or ChannelSet, or in the services-config.xml file.
Most likely, this mismatch is what's causing the BadVersion error you're getting.

Related

PHP Session Variables not working after switching from HTTP to HTTPS

I recently built a Content Management System, and I'm using session variables throughout my code. However, I just switched over to HTTPS, and now it appears the session variables aren't working.
I've done a lot of research, but unfortunately I haven't found a solution to this problem yet. I'm thinking there has to be a setting in the "php.ini", or the IIS Manager (I'm currently using IIS 7.5) that I'm not seeing.
I found that in ISS Manager, under ASP -> Session Properties -> New ID On Secure Connection defaults to True - I can definitely see that being a problem if it's doing the same thing somewhere with PHP, but I can't find it if that's an option.
I'm initializing the session_start(); at the very beginning of the document (nothing comes before it), and it works fine over HTTP, just not HTTPS. Additionally, I've updated the base_url to include the https:// on any redirects, so it's not going from HTTP to HTTPS, it's strictly going over HTTPS.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions of where I might look.

force heroku to avoid https

I have a PHP app in Heroku that references a javascript stored at a non-secure location. My developer tools are telling me that they won't load "Mixed Content".
How do I get Heroku to serve over HTTP instead of HTTPS?
If your app is served via HTTPS, there is no way you can force the external content to be loaded via HTTP. It would require a security downgrade, and the browsers refuses to perform such action.
The best solution is to make sure that even that JavaScript file is served via HTTPS. You can easily host it behind a proxy, or store somewhere where you can use HTTPS. Today is very easy to find an HTTPS-enabled storage system.
I don't think so you can achieve this on Heroku side. You have to manage this things on your side.
Thanks

Laravel 5 - Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

I have recently created a laravel project, and I am facing issues with it since I am trying to get it setup with SSL (Cloudflare).
What is the best way to redirect the user to the secured enviroment correctly in laravel 5?
Also, my CSS and JS are not beeing loaded in due to the fact that http is not allowed and my browser blocks the files from beeing loaded because they could be potential harmfull. (Which is not the case though, to be clear)
Can someone get me off the right track?
Redirecting your site users to a secure url (https://) should NOT be the job of the framework. This type of behavior should be handled on the DNS and A record level.
Redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS should be handled by the webserver.
Your assets are probably blocked because they are unencrypted (HTTP) on an encrypted site (HTTPS). You can solve that by using protocol relative URLs:
<script src=”//ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
Note the // instead of http:// or https://. This will cause your assets to be fetched using the same protocol as the site.
Laravel has a helper function for secure assets: secure_asset()
http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/helpers#method-secure-asset

Directing HTTP requests to HTTPS if initial connection is HTTPS but not if it is HTTP

I have a site running WordPress on Apache server and I am attempting to provide both HTTP and HTTPS connections via the same site. I want to allow connections over HTTP without forcing a redirect to HTTPS, unless the client is connecting initially via HTTPS then I want all subsequent HTTP requests to be forwarded to HTTPS to avoid issues with CORS and unsecured content warnings.
I am having some trouble turning up results on how to effectively do this with mod_rewrite alone. Most solutions I find try to force the connections to redirect to HTTPS regardless and will not allow an HTTP connection or vice versa. I have tried a few mod rewrite conditions including making use of the referer string but none seem to work thus far. I must be missing something because I feel that this is indeed possible but I and my search engines alone are stumped.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong or is this kind of functionality beyond Mod_Rewrite?
I was thinking to use a PHP script but was worried it wouldn't work for some static files since WordPress doesn't handle those requests.
Update:
I have made a php script to detect the version. It sets a cookie which expires in 20 seconds from being set, this is read by Mod_Rewrite and if set it redirects the URLs to HTTPS. This works for most of the subsequent requests of an initial HTTPS request. A few URLs seem to be unaffected by it, not sure exactly why as the cookie hasn't expired by the time of these file requests and the particular rules are before the static file bypass rules in the htaccess file. At any rate that was easy enough to fix by setting the file urls to protocol-less versions.
Some third party sites need domains rewritten though, as they serve https from other domains. On that note I don't think this is actually possible without buffering the whole page and actually re-writing the URLs.
It is possible to detect the initial connection but this must be done using Server Side code, like a PHP script. Then using the detection can be done at Mod_Rewrite level.
Add in the WordPress constraint and things get complicated.
WordPress isn't built to facilitate one install with both protocols allowing access to content. So to accomplish this would require a custom plugin using the detection mentioned earlier, and instead of using Mod_Rewrite to direct requests on the server, we have to buffer WordPress output and logically replace/rewrite URLs in the page before they go to the user if and only if the initial connection for the page is in SSL.
There is only one plugin I have found which does something similar to this, however it doesn't do dynamic detection only gives admin/editors a checkbox option to make a page SSL secured. The plugin is called WordPress HTTPS
Dynamic detection and redirection isn't something SSL was meant for anyways, it's either on or off, and most pages need it that way.
I was originally trying to provide both so I could use a self-signed certificate without worrying that users would get the "warning unsecured connection" messages from their browsers by forcing them to use only SSL connections.
So I'll be purchasing a cert or making a custom plugin.
tkausl is right, you don't really need to do mod_rewrite. You should be able to format links without the protocol and it will automagically select for you.
You can see that google does this with their hosted libraries:
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
*Note the lack of http: or https: this will follow the protocol requested by the user.

SSL directory structure

I've got a web app and now I've been told to implement SSL for that. I've never done that before, but I seem to have understood from Internet docs on how to do that.
But, my app has two sides: the user interface which is fine under SSL and the second side is I have some files that need to bypass the certificate. These files are accessed by remote machines and share the same libraries of some user interface files.
I've managed the bypass using symbolic links for the shared libraries but I'm not sure if this is the proper way to do it. I mean, if I don't use symbolic links to the shared libraries I can't use these scripts.
Thanks in advance for any light!
Do you mean you are calling the web pages from another machine but you want to bypass the cert? You can usually use curl for this: curl --no-check-certificate {url}
Otherwise you can probably just call those files without the 's' in the scheme (https / http) and be fine.

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