Enterprise CA (certificate authority)

Overview

Many companies implement a MITM (Man-in-the-Middle) firewall as part of a strict and secure network infrastructure using a self-hosted CA (certificate authority).

A custom root CA along with a MITM firewall, also known as an interception or enterprise certificate, is a digital certificate used by network security devices to intercept SSL/TLS-encrypted communication between a user and a server. During interception, data is decrypted and inspected for security and monitoring purposes.

Usage

Mounting Certificate Volume

To add your company's root CA, all you need to do is mount the certificate (or certificates) to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/workspace/ path (in the container):

Single

docker run \
  -v /path/on-host/ca.crt:/usr/local/share/ca-certificates/workspace/ca.crt \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Multiple

docker run \
  -v /folder/on-host:/usr/local/share/ca-certificates/workspace \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Install Certificate from HTTPS Endpoint

Alternatively, you can add your company's root CA via secure HTTPS endpoints. Use the WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_ENDPOINTS environment variable to define one or more (space-delimited) endpoints pointing to the desired certificate.

Single

docker run \
  -e WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_ENDPOINTS="https://corp.com/ca.pem" \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Multiple

docker run \
  -e WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_ENDPOINTS="https://corp.com/ca.pem https://alt.com/root.crt" \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Install Certificate from Insecure Endpoint

For trusted network environments, you can retrieve certificates from HTTP or insecure HTTPS endpoints using the WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_INSECURE_ENDPOINTS environment variable.

⚠️ WARNING

This variable supports both HTTP and HTTPS URLs. For HTTPS URLs, certificate validation is bypassed using insecure connections.

Use only in fully trusted network environments.

Single

docker run \
  -e WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_INSECURE_ENDPOINTS="http://corp.com/ca.pem" \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Multiple

docker run \
  -e WS_CA_ADDITIONAL_CERT_INSECURE_ENDPOINTS="http://corp.com/ca.pem https://untrusted.com/root.crt" \
  ghcr.io/kloudkit/workspace:v0.0.22

Generated Configurations

The installed certificates will be detected at startup and bundled along with all other available certificates (into /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/workspace-bundle.crt).

In addition, each zsh session will contain program specific environment variables that require the abovementioned bundles and are set automatically (system-wide):

• COMPOSER_CAFILE
• CURL_CA_BUNDLE
• NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS
• NPM_CONFIG_CAFILE
• PIP_CERT
• REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE
• SSL_CERT_FILE