Before a TLS connection is established between a client and the ingress gateway, the gateway and the client exchange certificates to verify each other’s identity. After successful validation, the TLS connection to the gateway is established. After the gateway receives the request, the TLS connection is terminated, and the unencrypted HTTP request is forwarded to the destination in the cluster.

Figure: mTLS listener setup
Figure: mTLS listener setup

Before you begin

  1. Set up Gloo Mesh Gateway in a single cluster.
  2. Install Bookinfo and other sample apps.

  3. The openssl version must be at least 1.1.

    1. Check your openssl version. If you see LibreSSL in the output, continue to the next step.
        openssl version
    2. Install the OpenSSL version (not LibreSSL). For example, you might use Homebrew.
        brew install openssl
    3. Review the output of the OpenSSL installation for the path of the binary file. You can choose to export the binary to your path, or call the entire path whenever the following steps use an openssl command.
      • For example, openssl might be installed along the following path: /usr/local/opt/openssl@3/bin/
      • To run commands, you can append the path so that your terminal uses this installed version of OpenSSL, and not the default LibreSSL. /usr/local/opt/openssl@3/bin/openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -x509 -sha256 -days 3650...

Create the TLS certificates to use for mTLS

To enable mTLS between a client and the gateway, you must create server and client TLS certificates. These steps show how to set up certificates for the httpbin.example.com domain.

  1. Create a root certificate for the example.com domain. You use this certificate to sign the server and client certificates later.

      mkdir example_certs
openssl req -x509 -sha256 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -subj '/O=example Inc./CN=example.com' -keyout example_certs/example.com.key -out example_certs/example.com.crt

  2. Create a server certificate and private key for the httpbin.example.com domain.

      openssl req -out example_certs/httpbin.example.com.csr -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example_certs/httpbin.example.com.key -subj "/CN=httpbin.example.com/O=httpbin organization"
openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 365 -CA example_certs/example.com.crt -CAkey example_certs/example.com.key -set_serial 0 -in example_certs/httpbin.example.com.csr -out example_certs/httpbin.example.com.crt

  3. Create a secret that stores the server certificate and key for the httpbin.example.com domain.

      kubectl create -n gloo-mesh-gateways secret generic httpbin-credential \
  --from-file=tls.key=example_certs/httpbin.example.com.key \
  --from-file=tls.crt=example_certs/httpbin.example.com.crt \
 --from-file=ca.crt=example_certs/example.com.crt

  4. Create a client certificate and key.

      openssl req -out example_certs/client.example.com.csr -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example_certs/client.example.com.key -subj "/CN=client.example.com/O=client organization"
openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 365 -CA example_certs/example.com.crt -CAkey example_certs/example.com.key -set_serial 1 -in example_certs/client.example.com.csr -out example_certs/client.example.com.crt

Set up an mTLS listener

To enable an mTLS listener, you must create a virtual gateway that uses the server credentials that you created earlier. Then, you set up routing rules for the httpbin app.

  1. Create the virtual gateway to configure your mTLS listener. Make sure to set the spec.tls.mode to MUTUAL and to reference the httpbin-credential Kubernetes secret that you created in the spec.tls.secretName field.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: VirtualGateway
metadata:
  annotations:
    cluster.solo.io/cluster: ""
  name: istio-ingressgateway
  namespace: default
spec:
  listeners:
  - allowedRouteTables:
    - host: httpbin.example.com
    http: {}
    port:
      number: 443
    tls: 
      mode: MUTUAL
      secretName: httpbin-credential
  workloads:
  - selector:
      labels:
        istio: ingressgateway
EOF

  2. Create a route table to route incoming requests on the httpbin.example.com domain to the httpbin app that you deployed earlier.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RouteTable
metadata:
  annotations:
    cluster.solo.io/cluster: ""
  name: mtls
  namespace: default
spec:
  hosts:
  - httpbin.example.com
  http:
  - forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - port:
          number: 8000
        ref:
          cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
          name: httpbin
          namespace: default
    matchers: 
      - uri:
          prefix: /status
      - uri:
          prefix: /delay
  virtualGateways:
  - name: istio-ingressgateway
    namespace: default
EOF

  3. Get the external address of the ingress gateway. If you deployed your ingress gateway in a different namespace or with a different version, update the command.

      export INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS=$(kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]['hostname','ip']}")
echo $INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS

  4. Send a request to the httpbin.example.com domain. The /delay/2 endpoint delays forwarding your request by 2 seconds. In your CLI output, verify that you get back a 200 HTTP response code and that you can see the successful TLS handshake between the server and the client.

      curl -vik --resolve httpbin.example.com:443:$INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS --cacert example_certs/example.com.crt --cert example_certs/client.example.com.crt --key example_certs/client.example.com.key https://httpbin.example.com:443/delay/2

    Example output:

      * Added httpbin.example.com:443:34.XXX.XX.XXX to DNS cache
* Hostname httpbin.example.com was found in DNS cache
*   Trying 34.XXX.XX.XXX:443...
* Connected to httpbin.example.com (34.XXX.XX.XXX) port 443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*  CAfile: example_certs1/example.com.crt
*  CApath: none
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Request CERT (13):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, CERT verify (15):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
* ALPN, server accepted to use h2
* Server certificate:
*  subject: CN=httpbin.example.com; O=httpbin organization
*  start date: Apr 19 17:54:57 2023 GMT
*  expire date: Apr 18 17:54:57 2024 GMT
*  issuer: O=example Inc.; CN=example.com
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
* Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use
* Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed)
* Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0
* Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x13f812400)
> GET /delay/2 HTTP/2
> Host: httpbin.example.com
> user-agent: curl/7.77.0
> accept: */*
> 
* Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS == 2147483647)!
< HTTP/2 200 
HTTP/2 200 

{
  "args": {}, 
  "data": "", 
  "files": {}, 
  "form": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Host": "httpbin.example.com", 
    "User-Agent": "curl/7.77.0", 
    "X-B3-Sampled": "0", 
    "X-B3-Spanid": "2b6d648c90a92d17", 
    "X-B3-Traceid": "17065b8c374e4cdd2b6d648c90a92d17", 
    "X-Envoy-Attempt-Count": "1", 
    "X-Envoy-Decorator-Operation": "httpbin.default.svc.cluster.local:8000/delay*", 
    "X-Envoy-Internal": "true", 
    "X-Envoy-Peer-Metadata": "Ch...eiofj", 
    "X-Envoy-Peer-Metadata-Id": "router~10.232.0.52~istio-ingressgateway-1-18-6cfb94798b-dt6fv.gloo-mesh-gateways~gloo-mesh-gateways.svc.cluster.local", 
    "X-Forwarded-Client-Cert": "Hash=cccbb...3D%0A-----END%20CERTIFICATE-----%0A\";Subject=\"O=client organization,CN=client.example.com\";URI="
  }, 
  "origin": "10.5.0.18", 
  "url": "https://httpbin.example.com/delay/2"
}
* Connection #0 to host httpbin.example.com left intact

Next steps

Now that you have the virtual gateway configured, you can add other Gloo Mesh Gateway resources to control traffic that is routed through the gateway.

Cleanup

You can optionally remove the resources that you set up as part of this guide.

  rm -r example_certs
kubectl delete virtualgateway istio-ingressgateway
kubectl delete routetable mtls
kubectl delete secret httpbin-credential -n gloo-mesh-gateways