HowTo: Node Red – Encrypt connection

In the article NodeRed - Set up user login has already pointed out that it is very important to secure the access to your NodeRed configuration interface. Especially if you access your NodeRed configuration via the internet, you should make sure that only you have access to it.

Besides setting up a user login, it is also important and useful to encrypt the connection between your browser and the NodeRed server.

How you can do this is described in the following article.

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Safety instructions

I know the following notes are always kind of annoying and seem unnecessary. Unfortunately, many people who knew "better" have lost eyes, fingers or other things due to carelessness or injured themselves. Data loss is almost negligible in comparison, but even these can be really annoying. Therefore, please take five minutes to read the safety instructions. Because even the coolest project is not worth injury or other trouble.
https://www.nerdiy.de/sicherheitshinweise/

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Requirements

Helpful articles:
To be able to set up a user login, NodeRed should of course already be installed.
How to prepare a RaspberryPi and then install NodeRed on it is described in the following articles.

The following three articles describe what needs to be done to prepare the RaspberryPi:
RaspberryPi – setup for nerdiys!
RaspberryPi – The first configuration!
RaspberryPi – Control the RaspberryPi via SSH
NodeRed – Installing NodeRed on the RaspberryPi

Required material:
-no-

Required material:

In the following list you will find all the parts you need to implement this article.

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Log in to the RaspberryPi via SSH

To start, you must first log in to the Rasp Pi with Putty via SSH. How to do this is in the article RaspberryPi - Control the RaspberryPi via SSH described.

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Create folder for the certificates

In order to be able to store the certificate files in a central location, it is recommended to create a folder in the NodeRed directory. If your “.node-red” folder is in your home directory - which should be the case if you installed NodeRed with the installation script - you can create a new folder with the following command.

mkdir /home/pi/.node-red/certificates

After running this command, a new folder called “certificates” should have been created in your “.node-red” folder.

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Switch to the created folder

So that the certificate files to be created are also stored in this newly created folder, you should now change to this folder with the following command.

cd /home/pi/.node-red/certificates/

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Generate certificate files

To make the encryption of your connection to Node-Red work you have to create some certificate files. With the following command you create a key file.

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -keyout key.pem -out csr.pem

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in csr.pem -signkey key.pem -out server.crt

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Enter the path to the certificate files in the NodeRed configuration file.

Now you have to tell your NodeRed installation that the connection should be encrypted in the future. You also need to specify where the certificate files you just created are located.
This information must be entered into the NodeRed configuration file. To do this, open your NodeRed configuration file with the following command:

sudo nano /home/pi/.node-red/settings.js

So that this function block also contains the paths to your certificate files you have to specify them. To do this, copy the following text into the function block.

key: fs.readFileSync('/home/pi/.node-red/certificates/key.pem'), cert: fs.readFileSync('/home/pi/.node-red/certificates/server.crt')

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Restart NodeRed

So that the entered changes in the configuration file are now also taken over you must restart NodeRed now. This can be done with the following command.

sudo service node red restart

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Call NodeRed configuration page

After you have restarted NodeRed, you will see that your NodeRed installation is no longer accessible under the old URL. This is because you previously accessed your NodeRed configuration page via “http://”, but it can now only be accessed via “https://”. The screenshots show the way with the Google Chrome browser. However, this path is similar for other browsers.

So that you can now access your NodeRed configuration page again, you must prefix the URL to your NodeRed configuration page with “https://”.

Most browsers warn at this point that the certificate with which you encrypt your connection is self-signed and thus not validated by a third party. On normal websites, this is indeed a problem, because it can indicate that the supposedly secure connection is not secure in reality. In this case, however, it is fine because we have just created the certificate ourselves.

To bypass the warning, click on “Advanced”…

…and then click “Continue to…”. You will now be redirected to the usual configuration page of your NodeRed installation.

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Have fun with the project

I hope everything worked as described for you. If not or you have questions or suggestions please let me know in the comments. I will then add this to the article if necessary.
Ideas for new projects are always welcome. 🙂

PS Many of these projects - especially the hardware projects - cost a lot of time and money. Of course I do this because I enjoy it, but if you think it's cool that I share the information with you, I would be happy about a small donation to the coffee fund. 🙂