How to Enable TLS 1.3 in Nginx on Fedora 29

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Introduction

TLS 1.3 is a version of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that was published in 2018 as a proposed standard in RFC 8446. It offers security and performance improvements over its predecessors.

This guide will demonstrate how to enable TLS 1.3 using the Nginx web server on Fedora 29.

Requirements

• Nginx version 1.13.0 or greater.
• OpenSSL version 1.1.1 or greater.
• Vultr Cloud Compute (VC2) instance running Fedora 29.
• A valid domain name and properly configured A/AAAA/CNAME DNS records for your domain.
• A valid TLS certificate. We will get one from Let's Encrypt.

Before you begin

Check the Fedora version.

cat /etc/fedora-release
# Fedora release 29 (Twenty Nine)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo dnf check-upgrade || sudo dnf upgrade -y

Install the needed packages.

sudo dnf install -y socat git

Disable SELinux and Firewall.

sudo setenforce 0 ; sudo systemctl stop firewalld ; sudo systemctl disable firewalld

Install Acme.sh client and obtain TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt

In this guide, we will use Acme.sh client to obtain SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt. You can use a client you are most familiar with.

Download and install Acme.sh.

sudo mkdir /etc/letsencrypt
git clone https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh.git
cd acme.sh 
sudo ./acme.sh --install --home /etc/letsencrypt --accountemail [email protected]
cd ~

Check the version.

/etc/letsencrypt/acme.sh --version
# v2.8.1

Obtain RSA and ECDSA certificates for your domain.

# RSA 2048
sudo /etc/letsencrypt/acme.sh --issue --standalone --home /etc/letsencrypt -d example.com --ocsp-must-staple --keylength 2048
# ECDSA
sudo /etc/letsencrypt/acme.sh --issue --standalone --home /etc/letsencrypt -d example.com --ocsp-must-staple --keylength ec-256

NOTE: Replace example.com in the commands with your domain name.

After running the previous commands, your certificates and keys will be accessible at:

• RSA: /etc/letsencrypt/example.com.
• ECC/ECDSA: /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc.

Install Nginx

Nginx added support for TLS 1.3 in version 1.13.0. Fedora 29 comes with Nginx and OpenSSL that support TLS 1.3 out of the box, so there is no need to build a custom version.

Install Nginx.

sudo dnf install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.2

Check the OpenSSL version against which Nginx was compiled.

nginx -V
# built with OpenSSL 1.1.1b FIPS  26 Feb 2019

Start and enable Nginx.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure Nginx

Now that we have successfully installed Nginx, we are ready to configure it with the proper configuration to start using TLS 1.3 on our server.

Run the sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf command, and populate the file with the following configuration.

server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

  server_name example.com;

  # RSA
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.cer;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/example.com.key;
  # ECDSA
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.cer;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/example.com.key;

  ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
  ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256';
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
}

Save the file and exit with :+W+Q.

Notice the new TLSv1.3 parameter of the ssl_protocols directive. This parameter is only necessary to enable TLS 1.3 on Nginx.

Check the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

To verify TLS 1.3, you can use browser dev tools or SSL Labs service. The screenshots below show Chrome's security tab.

That's all. You have successfully enabled TLS 1.3 in Nginx on your Fedora 29 server. The final version of TLS 1.3 was defined in August 2018, so there’s no better time to start adopting this new technology.