Apache Thrift - How to provide secure communication

Question

I want to secure the communication between Thrift server and client instances. To achieve that, firstly I enabled SSL communication using keystore on the server-side and truststore on the client-side as explained in this post: https://chamibuddhika.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/securing-a-thrift-service/

Afterwards, I wrapped my transport instances on both client and server with TEncryptedFramedTransport.java class provided in the following SO post: Symmetric encryption (AES) in Apache Thrift. This enabled symmetric encryption of messages transferred through socket connection.

My question is that does applying both of these make my communication more secure? Or is it unnecessary to apply both and should go with only one of these?

Answer 1

There is a concept called "defense in depth". The idea is that you still have one more defense in place even when one might got broken. The downside is, as always, that you have to pay for it with performance.

The real question here is this: Do I trust SSL/TLS alone or do I absolutely want to add another (application-)level of security that serves as another hurdle if some man-in-the-middle manages to get inside my SSL/TLS channel, even if that will cost me some performance?

Another aspect could be that might be forced to communicate across unsecure channels, i.e. when there is no TLS available. Remember, Thrift allows to switch transports as needed, and the SSL/TLS infrastructure is only available in certain cases.

If the answer is yes, do it. It would be the same answer with REST, SOAP, XMLRPC, Avro, gRPC or the well-known avian carriers.

So the final, decisive answer if you should do that depends on your priorities.

Be also aware that there could also be other attack vectors in your solution that might need to be adressed.