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Accepted
gelonida
Asked: 2021-06-30 16:27:42 +0800 CST

setup nginx to require certain conditions of a location for all but a given source IP

  • 772

I'm looking for a setup where I'd like to have SSL client certificates for all but one source IP.

My idea is to set

 ssl_verify_client optional;

and to add an elaborate if statement to the locations. However I don't know how to write such an if statement.

  # this requires ssl client certificates for all locations
  location / {
    if ($ssl_client_verify != "SUCCESS") { 
       return 403; 
    ...
  }

  # now what to write to require ssl certs except if source IP is e.g. 1.2.3.4
  location /two {
    if (?????) { 
       return 403; 
    ...
  }

Edit: Additional information

The switch ssl_verify_client with the value optional tells clients, that they can but don't have to send client certificates.

So by checking the variable $var_ssl_client_verify I can see whether a client certificate was presented and valid (SUCCESS) or not. This rule shall be applied for all clients, that do not have a given source IP. For one specific source IP I do not want to verify client certificates.

What I need is something like

    if ($ssl_client_verify != "SUCCESS" and source_ip != 1.2.3.4 ) { 
       return 403; 
    }

Edit 2: I changed the title from setup nginx to require client certs for all but a given source IP to setup nginx to require certain conditions of a location for all but a given source IP as what I am really struggling with has nothing to do with client certificates, but with combining if statements and filtering conditionally on the source IP address.

nginx ssl-certificate

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Multiple conditions aren't supported in Nginx for if statement. So, as a workaround and as client IP is evaluated in our usecase, the solution could be achieved similar to how it was achieved at https://www.nginx.com/blog/rate-limiting-nginx/#Advanced-Configuration-Examples . Basically, the solution goes like this...

    geo $limit {
    default 1;
    1.2.3.4 0; #please replace the example IP with the actual IP.
}

ssl_verify_client optional;
ssl_client_certificate /path/to/cert.pem;

map $limit $limit_key {
    0 "SUCCESS";
    1 $ssl_client_verify;
}

server {
    # ... other directives
    location / {
        if ( $limit_key != 'SUCCESS' ) { return 403; }
        # ... other directives
    }
}

    Basically, we assign the value "SUCCESS" to the variable for a specific IP. For every other IP, we assign the actual value of $ssl_client_verify.

    Alternative Answer

    ssl_verify_client optional;
ssl_client_certificate /path/to/cert.pem;
server {
    # ... other directives
    
    # initial value of $variable is the actual value of $ssl_client_verify
    set $variable $ssl_client_verify;

    # here we re-assign $variable with "SUCCESS" for our specific IP
    # please replace 1.2.3.4 with the actual IP
    if ( $remote_addr = "1.2.3.4" ) {
        set $variable "SUCCESS";
    }

    location / {
        if ( $variable != 'SUCCESS' ) { return 403; }
        # ... other directives
    }
}
    • 1