This page last changed on Sep 30, 2009 by jlargman.

This document describes how to configure Confluence to use a HTTPS encrypted secure socket layer for user logins and page data.

Unencrypted confidential data within Confluence may be intercepted by an attacker. To secure user logins, you can enable access via HTTPS (HTTP over SSL), and require its use for pages where passwords are sent. In some cases where issue data is sensitive, all pages can be set to be accessed over HTTPS.

Enabling SSL access is different for each application server, but specifying which pages to require protection for is generic. This document is specific to Tomcat, the default application server shipped with Confluence.

On this page:

Adding Secure User Logins

Adding HTTPS requires a valid SSL certificate. If you have a Certificate prepared, skip to the 'Modify the <INSTALL>/conf/server.xml File' section.

Creating A New SSL Certificate

Creating a self-signed certificate
The following commands are in reference to JDK 1.5. For commands/syntax relevant to JDK 1.6, please refer to this document.

On Windows, perform the following at the command prompt:

"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\keytool" -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA

Or on other platforms, perform the following at the command prompt:

$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA

Some questions will be asked, including a password for the certificate (the default is 'changeit'). Please note down what you choose, as it will be used in the next step.

"IE7 on Vista Issue"
If your clients will access Confluence from Internet Explorer 7 on Vista, please ensure that you specify the -keyalg RSA flag. By default the SHA1 algorithm is used, which results in 'Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage' errors on IE7 on Vista. Apparently on JDK 1.6 you also need to specify the -sigalg MD5withRSA flag since -keyalg RSA will still result in SHA1 being used (see this blogpost for more information).

Modify the <INSTALL>/conf/server.xml File

In the confluence directory, open the conf/server.xml file and insert one of the following just after the closing </Engine> tag:

  1. For users of Confluence 2.10 or later:
    Open conf/server.xml, uncomment the lines:
            <Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
                       maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
                       enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
                       acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
                       clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" SSLEnabled="true"
                       URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>"/>
    

    Or for users of Confluence 2.2 to 2.9.2:
    Open conf/server.xml, uncomment the lines:

    <Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
                       maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
                       enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
                       acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
                       clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
                       URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>" />
    
If your Confluence server is running off Apache Tomcat version 6.0.0 or later, you should ensure that the parameter-value pair SSLEnabled="true" has been added to the Connector tag above.
Establishing a CA-issued Certificate

In preparation for a production instance, an official CA-issued key pair is required. Find instructions in the Tomcat documentation.

Verify the Certificate is in the Correct Location

By default, Tomcat will look for the certificates in the file C:\Documents and Settings\\#CURRENT_USER#\.keystore on Windows or ~/.keystore on Unix. If your Certificate is not in this location, you will need to update your <INSTALL>/conf/server.xml file as outlined below, so that Tomcat can find it.

  1. For users of Confluence 2.2 or later:
    Open conf/server.xml, add the keystoreFile="<MY_CERTIFICATE_LOCATION>" parameter to the Connector tag as shown below:
    <Connector port="8443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
                       maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
                       enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
                       acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
                       clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"
                       URIEncoding="UTF-8" keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>" keystoreFile="<MY_CERTIFICATE_LOCATION>" />
    
Make sure to change your Server Base URL to https.

Specifying URL Patterns to be Redirected

Restart Tomcat and access your instance on https://<MY_BASE_URL>:8443/.

For more detailed information on setting up SSL with Tomcat (including additional configuration options), have a look at Tomcat 5.5 SSL or Tomcat 6 SSL.

Although HTTPS is now activated and available, the old HTTP URLs (http://localhost:8080) are still available. In most situations one wants these URLs to continue working, but for some to redirect to their HTTPS equivalent.

If you have changed the port that the SSL connector is running on from the preconfigured value of 8443, you must update the redirectPort attribute of the standard HTTP connector to reflect the new SSL port. Tomcat needs this information to know which port to redirect to when an incoming request needs to be secure.

If security is a concern, we recommend using SSL encryption site wide, for the reasons listed here: CONF-4116. To do this:

Edit the confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml file and add the following declaration to the end, before the </web-app> tag:

<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>Restricted URLs</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
  </web-resource-collection>
  <user-data-constraint>
    <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
  </user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Once this change is made, restart Confluence and access http://localhost:8080. You should be redirected to https://localhost:8443/login.action.

If you'd like to protect login.action only:

Please note that redirecting login.action only will leave the rest of the site open to http connections, but will not redirect the user back to http once they're on https. To do that, you'll need to add a rewrite rule in Apache or IIS.
<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>Login and Restricted Space URLs</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>/login.action</url-pattern>
  </web-resource-collection>
  <user-data-constraint>
    <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
  </user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Note that the example above specifies a url-pattern for the login URL /login.action. This means that whenever a user tries to access the unprotected version of the login page, they will be redirected automatically to the secured version of it.

If you want to protect individual spaces, there isn't a complete way of doing this at the moment. You can add a pattern like this:

<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>Login and Restricted Space URLs</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>/login.action</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>/display/SALARIES/*</url-pattern>
  </web-resource-collection>
  <user-data-constraint>
    <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
  </user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Troubleshooting

Check the Confluence Knowledge Base articles at Troubleshooting SSL.

Document generated by Confluence on Dec 10, 2009 18:41