Updating applications to connect to MySQL DB instances using new SSL/TLS certificates

As of September 19, 2019, Amazon RDS has published new Certificate Authority (CA) certificates for connecting to your RDS DB instances using Secure Socket Layer or Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS). Following, you can find information about updating your applications to use the new certificates.

This topic can help you to determine whether any client applications use SSL/TLS to connect to your DB instances. If they do, you can further check whether those applications require certificate verification to connect.

Note

Some applications are configured to connect to MySQL DB instances only if they can successfully verify the certificate on the server. For such applications, you must update your client application trust stores to include the new CA certificates.

You can specify the following SSL modes: disabled, preferred, and required. When you use the preferred SSL mode and the CA certificate doesn't exist or isn't up to date, the connection falls back to not using SSL and connects without encryption.

Because these later versions use the OpenSSL protocol, an expired server certificate doesn't prevent successful connections unless the required SSL mode is specified.

We recommend avoiding preferred mode. In preferred mode, if the connection encounters an invalid certificate, it stops using encryption and proceeds unencrypted.

After you update your CA certificates in the client application trust stores, you can rotate the certificates on your DB instances. We strongly recommend testing these procedures in a development or staging environment before implementing them in your production environments.

For more information about certificate rotation, see Rotating your SSL/TLS certificate. For more information about downloading certificates, see Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance. For information about using SSL/TLS with MySQL DB instances, see Using SSL with a MySQL DB instance.

Determining whether any applications are connecting to your MySQL DB instance using SSL

If you are using Amazon RDS for MySQL version 5.7 or 8.0 and the Performance Schema is enabled, run the following query to check if connections are using SSL/TLS. For information about enabling the Performance Schema, see Performance Schema quick start in the MySQL documentation.

mysql> SELECT id, user, host, connection_type 
       FROM performance_schema.threads pst 
       INNER JOIN information_schema.processlist isp 
       ON pst.processlist_id = isp.id;            
        

In this sample output, you can see both your own session (admin) and an application logged in as webapp1 are using SSL.

+----+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
| id | user            | host             | connection_type |
+----+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
|  8 | admin           | 10.0.4.249:42590 | SSL/TLS         |
|  4 | event_scheduler | localhost        | NULL            |
| 10 | webapp1         | 159.28.1.1:42189 | SSL/TLS         |
+----+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)            
        

Determining whether a client requires certificate verification to connect

You can check whether JDBC clients and MySQL clients require certificate verification to connect.

JDBC

The following example with MySQL Connector/J 8.0 shows one way to check an application's JDBC connection properties to determine whether successful connections require a valid certificate. For more information on all of the JDBC connection options for MySQL, see Configuration properties in the MySQL documentation.

When using the MySQL Connector/J 8.0, an SSL connection requires verification against the server CA certificate if your connection properties have sslMode set to VERIFY_CA or VERIFY_IDENTITY, as in the following example.

Properties properties = new Properties();
properties.setProperty("sslMode", "VERIFY_IDENTITY");
properties.put("user", DB_USER);
properties.put("password", DB_PASSWORD);                
            

Note

If you use either the MySQL Java Connector v5.1.38 or later, or the MySQL Java Connector v8.0.9 or later to connect to your databases, even if you haven't explicitly configured your applications to use SSL/TLS when connecting to your databases, these client drivers default to using SSL/TLS. In addition, when using SSL/TLS, they perform partial certificate verification and fail to connect if the database server certificate is expired.

MySQL

The following examples with the MySQL Client show two ways to check a script's MySQL connection to determine whether successful connections require a valid certificate. For more information on all of the connection options with the MySQL Client, see Client-side configuration for encrypted connections in the MySQL documentation.

When using the MySQL 5.7 or MySQL 8.0 Client, an SSL connection requires verification against the server CA certificate if for the --ssl-mode option you specify VERIFY_CA or VERIFY_IDENTITY, as in the following example.

mysql -h mysql-database.rds.amazonaws.com -uadmin -ppassword --ssl-ca=/tmp/ssl-cert.pem --ssl-mode=VERIFY_CA                
            

When using the MySQL 5.6 Client, an SSL connection requires verification against the server CA certificate if you specify the --ssl-verify-server-cert option, as in the following example.

mysql -h mysql-database.rds.amazonaws.com -uadmin -ppassword --ssl-ca=/tmp/ssl-cert.pem --ssl-verify-server-cert            
            

Updating your application trust store

For information about updating the trust store for MySQL applications, see Installing SSL certificates in the MySQL documentation.

For information about downloading the root certificate, see Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance.

For sample scripts that import certificates, see Sample script for importing certificates into your trust store.

Note

When you update the trust store, you can retain older certificates in addition to adding the new certificates.

If you are using the mysql JDBC driver in an application, set the following properties in the application.

System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStore", certs);
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword", "password");           
        

When you start the application, set the following properties.

java -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/path_to_truststore/MyTruststore.jks -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=my_truststore_password com.companyName.MyApplication        
        

Example Java code for establishing SSL connections

The following code example shows how to set up the SSL connection that validates the server certificate using JDBC.

public class MySQLSSLTest {
     
        private static final String DB_USER = "username";
        private static final String DB_PASSWORD = "password";
        // This key store has only the prod root ca.
        private static final String KEY_STORE_FILE_PATH = "file-path-to-keystore";
        private static final String KEY_STORE_PASS = "keystore-password";
            
        public static void test(String[] args) throws Exception {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
                    
            System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStore", KEY_STORE_FILE_PATH);
            System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword", KEY_STORE_PASS);
            
            Properties properties = new Properties();
            properties.setProperty("sslMode", "VERIFY_IDENTITY");
            properties.put("user", DB_USER);
            properties.put("password", DB_PASSWORD);
            
     
            Connection connection = null;
            Statement stmt = null;
            ResultSet rs = null;
            try {
                connection = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://mydatabase.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306",properties);
                stmt = connection.createStatement();
                rs=stmt.executeQuery("SELECT 1 from dual");
            } finally {
                if (rs != null) {
                    try {
                        rs.close();
                    } catch (SQLException e) {
                    }
                }
                if (stmt != null) {
                   try {
                        stmt.close();
                    } catch (SQLException e) {
                   }
                }
                if (connection != null) {
                    try {
                        connection.close();
                    } catch (SQLException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                }
            }
            return;
        }
    }
            

Important

After you have determined that your database connections use SSL/TLS and have updated your application trust store, you can update your database to use the rds-ca-2019 certificates. For instructions, see step 3 in Updating your CA certificate by modifying your DB instance.