Updating applications to connect to Aurora MySQL DB clusters using new TLS certificates

As of January 13, 2023, Amazon RDS has published new Certificate Authority (CA) certificates for connecting to your Aurora DB clusters using Transport Layer Security (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 TLS to connect to your DB clusters. If they do, you can further check whether those applications require certificate verification to connect.

After you update your CA certificates in the client application trust stores, you can rotate the certificates on your DB clusters. 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 cluster. For information about using TLS with Aurora MySQL DB clusters, see TLS connections to Aurora MySQL DB clusters.

Determining whether any applications are connecting to your Aurora MySQL DB cluster using TLS

If you are using Aurora MySQL version 2 (compatible with MySQL 5.7) and the Performance Schema is enabled, run the following query to check if connections are using 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 TLS.

+----+-----------------+------------------+-----------------+
| 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 TLS 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);

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 TLS 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.

Updating your application trust store for JDBC

You can update the trust store for applications that use JDBC for TLS connections.

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

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

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 TLS 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 = "user name";
        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 = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://jagdeeps-ssl-test.cni62e2e7kwh.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306",properties);
        Statement stmt=connection.createStatement();

        ResultSet rs=stmt.executeQuery("SELECT 1 from dual");

        return;
    }
}