Table of Contents

Working with SSL

Working with SSL for development may be necessary when working in contexts that require security, such as most web development scenarios. Sisk operates on top of HttpListener, which does not support native HTTPS, only HTTP. However, there are workarounds that allow you to work with SSL in Sisk. See them below:

Through the Sisk.Cadente.CoreEngine

  • Available on: Linux, macOS, Windows
  • Effort: easy

It is possible to use the experimental Cadente engine in Sisk projects, without requiring additional configuration on the computer or in the project. You will need to install the Sisk.Cadente.CoreEngine package in your project to be able to use the Cadente server in the Sisk server.

To configure SSL, you can use the UseSsl and UseEngine methods of the builder:

using var http = HttpServer.CreateBuilder()
    .UseEngine<CadenteHttpServerEngine>()
    .UseSsl(CertificateHelper.CreateTrustedDevelopmentCertificate("localhost"))

Note: this package is still in the experimental phase.

Through IIS on Windows

  • Available on: Windows
  • Effort: medium

If you are on Windows, you can use IIS to enable SSL on your HTTP server. For this to work, it is advisable that you follow this tutorial beforehand if you want your application to be listening on a host other than "localhost."

For this to work, you must install IIS through Windows features. IIS is available for free to Windows and Windows Server users. To configure SSL in your application, have the SSL certificate ready, even if it is self-signed. Next, you can see how to set up SSL on IIS 7 or higher.

Through mitmproxy

  • Available on: Linux, macOS, Windows
  • Effort: easy

mitmproxy is an interception proxy tool that allows developers and security testers to inspect, modify, and record HTTP and HTTPS traffic between a client (such as a web browser) and a server. You can use the mitmdump utility to start a reverse SSL proxy between your client and your Sisk application.

  1. Firstly, install mitmproxy on your machine.
  2. Start your Sisk application. For this example, we'll use port 8000 as the insecure HTTP port.
  3. Start the mitmproxy server to listen on the secure port at 8001:
mitmdump --mode reverse:http://localhost:8000/ -p 8001

And you're ready to go! You can already access your application through https://localhost:8001/. Your application does not need to be running for you to start mitmdump.

Alternatively, you can add a reference to the mitmproxy helper in your project. This still requires that mitmproxy is installed on your computer.

Through Sisk.SslProxy package

  • Available on: Linux, macOS, Windows
  • Effort: easy
Important

The Sisk.SslProxy package is deprecated in favor of the Sisk.Cadente.CoreEngine package and will no longer be maintained.

The Sisk.SslProxy package is a simple way to enable SSL on your Sisk application. However, it is an extremely experimental package. It may be unstable to work with this package, but you can be part of the small percentage of people who will contribute to making this package viable and stable. To get started, you can install the Sisk.SslProxy package with:

dotnet add package Sisk.SslProxy
Note

You must enable "Include prerelease" in the Visual Studio Package Manager to install Sisk.SslProxy.

Again, it is an experimental project, so don't even think about putting it into production.

At the moment, Sisk.SslProxy can handle most HTTP/1.1 features, including HTTP Continue, Chunked-Encoding, WebSockets, and SSE. Read more about SslProxy here.

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