AWS API-Gateway client authentication and NGINX

Question

Currently i try to implement the AWS API Gateway Client Authentication with NGINX Backend Servers. I want to prevent access to my api except than AWS API-Gateway. I have created a client certificate on the AWS API Gateway Console(PEM encoded) and set up my virtual host config as follows. I'm using already a CA signed wildcard certificate to access the subdomain.

server {
    listen 443;
    server_name api.example.com;

    if ($bad_client) { return 403; }

    root /usr/share/nginx/api.example.com/public;
        index index.php;

    ssl on;
    ssl_stapling on;
    ssl_trusted_certificate aws-cert.pem;
    ssl_verify_client on;


    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/ca-bundle.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/private.key;
    ssl_session_timeout 10m;

    ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers "HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 or HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5:!3DES";
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    error_page 404 /404.html;
    location  /404.html {
        internal;
    }


    location / {
        try_files $uri.html $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "error_log=/var/log/php5-fpm.log";
    }


    location ~ /\.ht {
         deny  all;
     }
}

I get the following error message and the whole nginx service is not available any more. The docs of Amazon are not very helpful. What i'm doing wrong?

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/getting-started-client-side-ssl-authentication.html

 [emerg] 19636#0: no ssl_client_certificate for ssl_client_verify

scrossan scrossan · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-27T11:14:25

In order for Nginx to verify the client, you need to tell it which certificate the client will be using. In my config I have:

# Client auth via certs
ssl_client_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_verify_client on;

I'm not entirely clear on the difference between the ssl_client_certificate and ss_trusted_certificate directives; perhaps somebody else can explain that.

Docs here.

AWS API-Gateway client authentication and NGINX

1 Answers