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Configure SSL offloading with end-to-end encryption via Terraform

What is SSL offloading

A simple SSL offloading setup terminates SSL traffic (HTTPS), decrypts the SSL records, and forwards the clear text (HTTP) traffic to the back-end web servers. Clear text traffic is vulnerable to being spoofed, read, stolen, or compromised by individuals who succeed in gaining access to the back-end network devices or web servers.

You can, therefore, configure SSL offloading with end-to-end security by re-encrypting the clear text data and using secure SSL sessions to communicate with the back-end Web servers.

Configure the back-end SSL transactions so that the appliance uses SSL session multiplexing to reuse existing SSL sessions with the back-end web servers. It helps in avoiding CPU-intensive key exchange (full handshake) operations and also reduces the overall number of SSL sessions on the server. As a result, it accelerates the SSL transaction while maintaining end-to-end security.

How to use the terraform scripts

1. Download the ssl-offloading-with-end-to-end-encryption folder into your local machine.
2. Change the directory to ssl-offloading-with-end-to-end-encryption folder.
3. Fill the target Citrix ADC in provider.tf
4. Fill the service, lb-vserver, certkey details in input.auto.tfvars
5. Run terraform init to initialise the terraform environment
6. Run terraform apply to apply the ssl offloading configuration to the target Citrix ADC via terraform.

Further reading

• Citrix Docs: Configure SSL offloading with end-to-end encryption