Mutual TLS

Overview

This module performs mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication when the ngrok edge terminates TLS on incoming connections to your HTTP endpoint. The client must present a valid TLS certificate that is signed by one of the specified CAs or the connection will be rejected.

ngrok injects headers into upstream HTTP requests with information about the client certificate presented.

Example Usage

Only allow requests whose connections present a client certificate signed by one of the CAs present in the PEM bundle.

Agent CLI

ngrok http 80 --mutual-tls-cas /path/to/cas.pem

Agent Config

tunnels:
  example:
    proto: "http"
    addr: 80
    mutual_tls_cas: "/path/to/cas.pem"

SSH

note

Mutual TLS is not supported via SSH.

Go

import (
	"context"
	"crypto/x509"
	"encoding/pem"
	"net"
	"os"

	"golang.ngrok.com/ngrok"
	"golang.ngrok.com/ngrok/config"
)

func ngrokListener(ctx context.Context) (net.Listener, error) {
	caBytes, _ := os.ReadFile("/path/to/cas.pem")
	der, _ := pem.Decode(caBytes)
	certs, _ := x509.ParseCertificates(der.Bytes)

	return ngrok.Listen(ctx,
		config.HTTPEndpoint(
			config.WithMutualTLSCA(certs...),
		),
		ngrok.WithAuthtokenFromEnv(),
	)
}

Go Package Docs:

• https://pkg.go.dev/golang.ngrok.com/ngrok/config#WithMutualTLSCA

Javascript

const ngrok = require("@ngrok/ngrok");
const fs = require("fs");

(async function () {
	const listener = await ngrok.forward({
		addr: 8080,
		authtoken_from_env: true,
		mutual_tls_cas: [fs.readFileSync("/path/to/cas.pem", "utf8")],
	});

	console.log(`Ingress established at: ${listener.url()}`);
})();

Javascript SDK Docs:

• https://ngrok.github.io/ngrok-javascript/interfaces/Config.html#mutual_tls_cas
• https://ngrok.github.io/ngrok-javascript/classes/HttpListenerBuilder.html#mutualTlsca

Python

import ngrok

def load_file(name):
    with open(name, "r") as crt:
        return bytearray(crt.read().encode())

listener = ngrok.forward("localhost:8080", authtoken_from_env=True,
	mutual_tls_cas=load_file("/path/to/cas.pem"))

print(f"Ingress established at: {listener.url()}");

Python SDK Docs:

• https://ngrok.github.io/ngrok-python/http_listener_builder.html#ngrok.HttpListenerBuilder.mutual_tlsca
• https://ngrok.github.io/ngrok-python/index.html#full-configuration

Rust

use ngrok::prelude::*;

async fn listen_ngrok() -> anyhow::Result<impl Tunnel> {
    let ca_cert: &[u8] = load_bytes!("/path/to/cas.pem");

    let sess = ngrok::Session::builder()
        .authtoken_from_env()
        .connect()
        .await?;

    let tun = sess
        .http_endpoint()
        .mutual_tlsca(ca_cert.into())
        .listen()
        .await?;

    println!("Listening on URL: {:?}", tun.url());

    Ok(tun)
}

Rust Crate Docs:

• https://docs.rs/ngrok/latest/ngrok/config/struct.HttpTunnelBuilder.html#method.mutual_tlsca

Kubernetes Controller

note

Mutual TLS is not yet supported with the Kubernetes Ingress Controller.

You can +1 the GitHub issue tracking its implementation.

Behavior

Multiple CAs

You may specify multiple CAs to be used for mTLS authentication. A connection is considered authenticated if it presents a certificate signed by any of the specified CAs. Agents allow you to specify multiple CAs by simply specifying a PEM file that contains multiple x509 CA certificates concatenated together. A file like that might look like:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

CA Basic Constraint

x509 certificates contain a basic constraint attribute called cA which defines whether or not the certificate may be used as a CA.

ngrok will refuse to accept a certificate as an mTLS certificate authority unless this constraint is set to true.

See RFC 5280 4.2.1.9.

Reference

Configuration

Agent Configuration

Parameter	Description
Certificate Authorities	PEM-encoded certificate authorities. You may concatenate CAs to multiple together. A client certificate must be signed by at least one of the CAs.

Edge Configuration

Parameter	Description
Certificate Authority IDs	A set of certificates authorities. A client certificate must be signed by at least one of the configured CAs. See the HTTPS Edge Mutual TLS Module API Resource for additional details. Max of 10.

Upstream Headers

This module adds headers to the HTTP request sent to your upstream service with details about the client certificate that was presented for the Mutual TLS handshake.

Header Name	Value
ngrok-mtls-subject-cn	The client certificate subject common name
ngrok-mtls-subject-alt-name-dns	The client certificate's DNS subject alternative names
ngrok-mtls-email-addresses	The client certificate's email subject alternative names
ngrok-mtls-serial-number	The client certificate's serial number

Errors

If the client does not present any certificate or it does not present a valid certificate signed by the CA, the TLS handshake will be aborted. Because the connection is aborted during the TLS handshake, the client will not receive an HTTP error response or an ngrok error code.

Instead, the TLS connection aborts with a TLS error as defined by RFC 5246. The most common alert code returned for a failed mutual TLS handshake is code 42 (bad_certificate) which most TLS implementations will report with the error string string "bad certificate".

Events

When the mutual TLS module is enabled, it populates the following fields in http_request_complete.v0 events.

Fields
tls.client_cert.serial_number
tls.client_cert.subject.cn

No event data is captured when the module is enabled on TLS endpoints.

Edges

Mutual TLS is an HTTPS Edge module. When the Mutual TLS module is configured via an Edge, you must specify one or more references to Certificate Authority objects.

The Mutual TLS Edge module is applied to the Edge directly and not to any individual Route. This is because Mutual TLS is enforced before any HTTP processing can begin.

• Mutual TLS Edge Module API Resource
• Certificate Authority API Resource

Pricing

This module is available on the Enterprise plan.

Try it out

This example assumes you have an x509 private key and certificate encoded as PEM files called client-key.pem and client-cert.pem, respectively. The certificate must be signed by one of the CA certificates you provided to the Mutual TLS module.

Run curl with the following command:

curl --client client-cert.pem --key client-key.pem https://yourapp.ngrok.app

curl has a shortcut to pass a single file if the private key and certificate are concatenated together.

cat client-cert.pem client-key.pem > client-cert-and-key.pem
curl --cert client-cert-and-key.pem https://yourapp.ngrok.app