Using SSL Client Certificates to log into Trac

Set up your SSL PKI

I will not explain in detail how to set up SSL for Apache. There are a lot of good step-by-step guides out there that can help you in this:

• In my opinion the best guide is this one: ​http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1818
• The official apache mod_ssl documentation can be found here: ​http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/

I'll assume that you have the following by now:

• a certificate for your Trac web server
• client certificates for your users (already installed in their browsers)

How to configure mod_ssl

Here are the most important apache directives.

Server configuration (httpd.conf): <IfModule mod_ssl.c> … SSLVerifyClient require SSLVerifyDepth 1 SSLCACertificateFile /your/root/certificate.pem … </IfModule>

Virtual host configuration: … SSLEngine on

<Location /trac>

… SSLRequireSSL …

</Location>

<Location "/login">

# Rather than setting REMOTE_USER through basic authentication # we'll set it directly as the client's certificate's common name. SSLUserName SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_CN

</Location>