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MSC 1711 Certificates FAQ

The goal of Synapse 0.99.0 is to act as a stepping stone to Synapse 1.0.0. It supports the r0.1 release of the server to server specification, but is compatible with both the legacy Matrix federation behaviour (pre-r0.1) as well as post-r0.1 behaviour, in order to allow for a smooth upgrade across the federation.

The most important thing to know is that Synapse 1.0.0 will require a valid TLS certificate on federation endpoints. Self signed certificates will not be sufficient.

Synapse 0.99.0 makes it easy to configure TLS certificates and will interoperate with both >= 1.0.0 servers as well as existing servers yet to upgrade.

It is critical that all admins upgrade to 0.99.0 and configure a valid TLS certificate. Admins will have 1 month to do so, after which 1.0.0 will be released and those servers without a valid certificate will not longer be able to federate with >= 1.0.0 servers.

If you are unable to generate a valid TLS certificate for your server (e.g. because you run it on behalf of someone who doesn't want to give you a TLS certificate for their domain, or simply because the matrix domain is hosted on a different server), then you can now create a /.well-known/matrix/server file on the matrix domain in order to delegate Matrix hosting to another domain. Admins who currently use SRV records to delegate a domain which they do not control TLS for will need to switch to using .well-known/matrix/server - though they should retain their SRV record while the federation upgrades over the course of the month. Other SRV records are unaffected.

Full upgrade notes can be found in UPGRADE.rst. What follows is a timeline and some frequently asked questions.

For more details and context on the release of the r0.1 Server/Server API and imminent Matrix 1.0 release, you can also see our main talk from FOSDEM 2019.

Timeline
Synapse 0.99.0 has just been released, what do I need to do right now?
How do I upgrade?
What will happen if I do not set up a valid federation certificate immediately?
What will happen if I do nothing at all?
When do I need a SRV record or .well-known URI?
Can I still use an SRV record?
I have created a .well-known URI. Do I still need an SRV record?
It used to work just fine, why are you breaking everything?
Can I manage my own certificates rather than having Synapse renew certificates itself?
Do you still recommend against using a reverse-proxy on the federation port?
Do I still need to give my TLS certificates to Synapse if I am using a reverse-proxy?
Do I need the same certificate for the client and federation port?
How do I tell Synapse to reload my keys/certificates after I replace them?

Timeline

5th Feb 2019 - Synapse 0.99.0 is released.

All server admins are encouraged to upgrade.

0.99.0:

provides support for ACME to make setting up Let's Encrypt certs easy, as well as .well-known support.
does not enforce that a valid CA cert is present on the federation API, but rather makes it easy to set one up.
provides support for .well-known

Admins should upgrade and configure a valid CA cert. Homeservers that require a .well-known entry (see below), should retain their SRV record and use it alongside their .well-known record.

>= 5th March 2019 - Synapse 1.0.0 is released

1.0.0 will land no sooner than 1 month after 0.99.0, leaving server admins one month after 5th February to upgrade to 0.99.0 and deploy their certificates. In accordance with the the S2S spec 1.0.0 will enforce federation checks. This means that any homeserver without a valid certificate after this point will no longer be able to federate with 1.0.0 servers.

Synapse 0.99.0 has just been released, what do I need to do right now?

Upgrade as soon as you can in preparation for Synapse 1.0.0.

How do I upgrade?

Follow the upgrade notes here UPGRADE.rst

What will happen if I do not set up a valid federation certificate immediately?

Nothing initially, but once 1.0.0 is in the wild it will not be possible to federate with 1.0.0 servers.

What will happen if I do nothing at all?

If the admin takes no action at all, and remains on a Synapse < 0.99.0 then the homeserver will be unable to federate with those who have implemented .well-known. Then, as above, once the month upgrade window has expired the homeserver will not be able to federate with any Synapse >= 1.0.0

When do I need a SRV record or .well-known URI?

If your homeserver listens on the default federation port (8448), and your server_name points to the host that your homeserver runs on, you do not need an SRV record or .well-known/matrix/server URI.
For instance, if you registered example.com and pointed its DNS A record at a fresh Upcloud VPS or similar, you could install Synapse 0.99 on that host, giving it a server_name of example.com, and it would automatically generate a valid TLS certificate for you via Let's Encrypt and no SRV record or .well-known URI would be needed.

This is the common case, although you can add an SRV record or .well-known/matrix/server URI for completeness if you wish.

However, if your server does not listen on port 8448, or if your server_name does not point to the host that your homeserver runs on, you will need to let other servers know how to find it.

The easiest way to do this is with a .well-known/matrix/server URI on the webroot of the domain to advertise your server. For instance, if you ran "matrixhosting.com" and you were hosting a Matrix server for example.com, you would ask example.com to create a file at:

https://example.com/.well-known/matrix/server

with contents:

{"m.server": "example.matrixhosting.com:8448"}

...which would tell servers trying to connect to example.com to instead connect to example.matrixhosting.com on port 8448. You would then configure Synapse with a server_name of "example.com", but generate a TLS certificate for example.matrixhosting.com.

As an alternative, you can still use an SRV DNS record for the delegation, but this will require you to have a certificate for the matrix domain (example.com in this example). See "Can I still use an SRV record?".

Can I still use an SRV record?

Firstly, if you didn't need an SRV record before (because your server is listening on port 8448 of your server_name), you certainly don't need one now: the defaults are still the same.

If you previously had an SRV record, you can keep using it provided you are able to give Synapse a TLS certificate corresponding to your server name. For example, suppose you had the following SRV record, which directs matrix traffic for example.com to matrix.example.com:443:

_matrix._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 10 5 443 matrix.example.com

In this case, Synapse must be given a certificate for example.com - or be configured to acquire one from Let's Encrypt.

If you are unable to give Synapse a certificate for your server_name, you will also need to use a .well-known URI instead. However, see also "I have created a .well-known URI. Do I still need an SRV record?".

I have created a .well-known URI. Do I still need an SRV record?

As of Synapse 0.99, Synapse will first check for the existence of a .well-known URL and follow any delegation it suggests. It will only then check for the existence of an SRV record.

That means that the SRV record will often be redundant. However, you should remember that there may still be older versions of Synapse in the federation which do not understand .well-known URIs, so if you removed your SRV record you would no longer be able to federate with them.

It is therefore best to leave the SRV record in place for now. Synapse 0.34 and earlier will follow the SRV record (and not care about the invalid certificate). Synapse 0.99 and later will follow the .well-known URI, with the correct certificate chain.

It used to work just fine, why are you breaking everything?

We have always wanted Matrix servers to be as easy to set up as possible, and so back when we started federation in 2014 we didn't want admins to have to go through the cumbersome process of buying a valid TLS certificate to run a server. This was before Let's Encrypt came along and made getting a free and valid TLS certificate straightforward. So instead, we adopted a system based on Perspectives: an approach where you check a set of "notary servers" (in practice, homeservers) to vouch for the validity of a certificate rather than having it signed by a CA. As long as enough different notaries agree on the certificate's validity, then it is trusted.

However, in practice this has never worked properly. Most people only use the default notary server (matrix.org), leading to inadvertent centralisation which we want to eliminate. Meanwhile, we never implemented the full consensus algorithm to query the servers participating in a room to determine consensus on whether a given certificate is valid. This is fiddly to get right (especially in face of sybil attacks), and we found ourselves questioning whether it was worth the effort to finish the work and commit to maintaining a secure certificate validation system as opposed to focusing on core Matrix development.

Meanwhile, Let's Encrypt came along in 2016, and put the final nail in the coffin of the Perspectives project (which was already pretty dead). So, the Spec Core Team decided that a better approach would be to mandate valid TLS certificates for federation alongside the rest of the Web. More details can be found in MSC1711.

This results in a breaking change, which is disruptive, but absolutely critical for the security model. However, the existence of Let's Encrypt as a trivial way to replace the old self-signed certificates with valid CA-signed ones helps smooth things over massively, especially as Synapse can now automate Let's Encrypt certificate generation if needed.

Can I manage my own certificates rather than having Synapse renew certificates itself?

Yes, you are welcome to manage your certificates yourself. Synapse will only attempt to obtain certificates from Let's Encrypt if you configure it to do so.The only requirement is that there is a valid TLS cert present for federation end points.

We no longer actively recommend against using a reverse proxy. Many admins will find it easier to direct federation traffic to a reverse-proxy and manage their own TLS certificates, and this is a supported configuration.

### Do I still need to give my TLS certificates to Synapse if I am using a reverse proxy?

Practically speaking, this is no longer necessary.

If you are using a reverse-proxy for all of your TLS traffic, then you can set no_tls: True. In that case, the only reason Synapse needs the certificate is to populate a legacy 'tls_fingerprints' field in the federation API. This is ignored by Synapse 0.99.0 and later, and the only time pre-0.99 Synapses will check it is when attempting to fetch the server keys - and generally this is delegated via matrix.org, which is on 0.99.0.

However, there is a bug in Synapse 0.99.0 4554 which prevents Synapse from starting if you do not give it a TLS certificate. To work around this, you can give it any TLS certificate at all. This will be fixed soon.

Do I need the same certificate for the client and federation port?

No. There is nothing stopping you doing so, particularly if you are using a reverse-proxy. However, Synapse will use the same certificate on any ports where TLS is configured.

How do I tell Synapse to reload my keys/certificates after I replace them?

Synapse will reload the keys and certificates when it receives a SIGHUP - for example kill -HUP $(cat homeserver.pid). Alternatively, simply restart Synapse, though this will result in downtime while it restarts.

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