ColdFusion Muse

USPS Shipping API Ending TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.0 Support, is your ColdFusion Server Ready?

At CF Webtools we recently went through a round of server upgrades to handle the Authorize.net ending support for older TLS versions. Now USPS, United State Postal Service, is doing the same thing with their Shipping APIs. This is going to be happening for all API's and most likely all this year as PCI requirements for ending support for TLS 1.1 and older at the end of June 2018. This is according to the PCI Security Standards Council.

USPS will be turning off support for TLS 1.1 and older for testing. In advance of the changes to production, TLS version 1.0 and 1.1 support will be discontinued in the lower Web Tools environments and available for testing on 5/22/18: https://stg-secure.shippingapis.com/shippingapi.dll): 06/11/18.

This message explains some security improvements planned for our services. Effective 06/22/18, Web Tools will discontinue support of Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.0 and 1.1 for securing connections to our HTTPS APIs through the following URL: https://stg-secure.shippingapis.com/shippingapi.dll. This includes, but is not limited to, all shipping label and package pickup APIs. After this change, integrations leveraging TLS version 1.0 and 1.1 will fail when attempting to access the APIs.

You are receiving this message because the Web Tools UserID associated with your email address has made HTTPS requests over the past year. It is possible that no changes are necessary to retain Web Tools services and benefit from the improvements. Please review the entire message carefully and share with your web developer, software vendor, or IT service provider to determine if your use of the Web Tools APIs will be affected. If you have already updated your security certificates please disregard this message. If you are not sure if any changes are necessary, please ask your IT service provider.

In advance of the changes to production, TLS version 1.0 and 1.1 support will be discontinued in the lower Web Tools environments and available for testing on 5/22/18: https://stg-secure.shippingapis.com/shippingapi.dll): 06/11/18.

Further background: Security research published in recent years demonstrated that TLS version 1.0 and 1.1 contained weaknesses that limited its ability to protect and secure communications. These weaknesses have been addressed in the TLS 1.2 version. Major browser software vendors have been supporting TLS 1.2 for some time. Consistent with our priority to protect USPS Web Tools customers, Web Tools will only support versions of the more modern TLS 1.2 as of the effective date noted above.

Contact us at WebTools@usps.gov with any questions or concerns.

This means that if you are using older methods to make calls to USPS that are not capable of making TLS 1.2 connections then you will NOT be able to process Shipping API transactions.

This affects ALL ColdFusion versions 9.0.2 and older! This also affects ColdFusion 10 Update 17 and older. If your server is running any of these older versions of ColdFusion and your server is processing Shipping API transactions with USPS then this advisory applies to your server.

Mitigation Getting compliant depends on age of your server operating system. There are three main ways to get your server to handle TLS 1.2.

1. If you're running on Windows Server 2008 Standard (not R2) or older then the only solution is to migrate to a newer server. This can be challenging and time consuming. It's best to start planning now if a plan isn't already in place and being acted upon.
2. If your server is running ColdFusion 10 and newer on Windows 2008 or newer then the solution is most likely very simple. In most cases you'll need to install the ColdFusion patches and upgrade to Java 1.8.0_nn.
3. There is a solution for the in between systems running ColdFusion 9 and older on Windows 2008 R2. This does require using a third party extension to ColdFusion and some refactoring of your code to call the API.
4. There are sure to be outlier cases that will require either migration or patching depending on the exact combination of operating system, ColdFusion version and Java version.

CF Webtools has been successfully mitigating this issue for clients servers for the past couple years and we are very experienced in resolving these security related issues. In a previous blog post I tested which TLS levels were supported by various ColdFusion versions on various Java versions and produced an easy to read chart.

If your ColdFusion server is affected by this or if you do not know if your ColdFusion server is affected by this then please contact us (much) sooner than later. Our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.

NEWSFLASH! Adobe Released the New ColdFusion 2018 Public Beta!

Adobe has announced the Public Beta of Adobe ColdFusion 2018 is now available. This release brings an all new Performance Monitoring Toolset that is available with both the Standard and Enterprise versions (So I've been told). There's plenty of language improvements and updates and a new Public Beta of ColdFusion Builder 2018. Hurry up while supplies last!

There a large number of changes including an all new ColdFusion Administrator. Here's a partial list of new things according to Adobe:

1. ColdFusion (2018 release) has a new User Interface. The new interface is based on a tiled interface. We have also enriched the search experience on the Administrator portal.
2. We have removed Server Monitor. We have introduced a tool called Performance Monitoring Toolset, which is more intuitive, includes more features, and provides better visibility of your application's performance.
3. We have made significant improvements to the core language features. Here is a brief list of the changes:
   1. Introduced NULL support
   2. Introduced closures in tags
   3. Introduced Asynchronous programming using Future
   4. Enhanced Object-Oriented Programming with the following:
      1. Abstract components and methods
      2. Final component, method, and variable
      3. Default functions in interfaces
      4. Covariance
   5. Semi-colons are now optional in a cfscript code
   6. Introduced named parameters in functions
   7. Introduced slicing in arrays
   8. New operator support using name-spaces for java, webservices, dotnet com, corba, and cfc
   9. Introduced support for typed arrays
   10. Introduced string literals and support for numeric member functions
   11. Introduced negative indices support for arrays
   12. New functions- ArrayFirst, Arraylast, QueryDeleteColumn, and QueryDeleteRow
4. Enhanced CLI and introduced REPL.
5. Introduced REST Playground application for testing your REST APIs.
6. Added support for REST PATCH verb.
7. Filter fields from JSON request.
8. Enhance performance through Caching with the newly added engines:
   1. Memcached
   2. JCS
   3. Redis
   4. Using a custom cache plugin
9. New Admin APIs to support the caching engines
10. Hibernate upgraded to ver 5.2
11. New configuration settings in wsconfig tool
12. Updates to ColdFusion Builder.

This is a huge update! Get it while it's hot!

ColdFusion Security updates for ColdFusion 2016 and ColdFusion 11

Adobe released important security updates and big fixes today, update 6 and update 14 for ColdFusion 2016 and ColdFusion 11 respectively.

These updates resolve an important insecure library loading vulnerability (CVE-2018-4938), an important cross-site scripting vulnerability that could lead to code injection (CVE-2018-4940) and an important cross-site scripting vulnerability that could lead to information disclosure (CVE-2018-4941). These updates also include a mitigation for a critical unsafe Java deserialization vulnerability (CVE-2018-4939) and a mitigation for a critical unsafe XML parsing vulnerability (CVE-2018-4942).

There is a bug of great importance to many that has finally been fixed. I've blogged about this before and I was able to create a work around to resolve this issue until it was fixed by Adobe. The SFTP/FTPS bug would not allow connections to secure FTP servers that utilized newer SSL protocols. When using CFFTP to connect to some S-FTP server, during connection, you can see an error message. This has been a growing issue as more and more companies replace plain text FTP servers with SFTP or FTPS servers that utilize stronger protocols.

For ColdFusion 2016 this update upgrades Tomcat to version 8.5.28 and OpenSSL to version 1.0.2n.

For ColdFusion 11 this update upgrades Tomcat to version 7.0.85 and OpenSSL to version 1.0.2n.

The security updates referenced in the above Tech Notes require JDK 8u121 or higher (for ColdFusion 2016) and JDK 7u131 or JDK 8u121 (for ColdFusion 11).

This is one more friendly reminder to make sure your ColdFusion servers are patched! Either patch them yourself, have your hosting provider patch them or if they are not familiar or knowledgeable with ColdFusion contact us at CF Webtools to patch your servers. Our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.

*Note: ColdFusion 11 when it was first released came with a version of Java 1.7.0_nn. Adobe later re-released ColdFusion 11 with Java 1.8.0_25. If you have ColdFusion 11 still running on Java 1.7 I highly recommend that Java be upgraded to Java 1.8. Oracle is no longer supporting Java 1.7 and 1.7 is long past it's end of life. Even though the Adobe instructions for this current security update states that you can run Java 1.7.0_131, I highly recommend upgrading to Java 1.8. Personally I will not install Java 1.7 on a clients servers and sign off on it being 'secure'.

Henry II on Vacation - Why Teams Matter

"Just add more resources..." is a comment I hear quite frequently in our corner of the tech world. It is often thought of as an easy "solution" to IT challenges. Unfortunately, adding additional developers can often result in further bottlenecks. The following is a real life example (the names have been changed to protect the innocent)!

Let's talk about Lead developer Henry II and his role within ACME Company. In spite of being obsessed over ownership of the Aquitaine and looking vaguely like Peter O'toole, he's a terrific programmer, smart, aggressive and a problem solver of the first order. He tackles tasks with a great deal of energy and seems to be able to see the whole picture. Were he the only programmer (a team of one) these qualities would serve him well to get the most out of what he has to offer. As it is, these qualities combine with ACME's development model to serve as a constraint to efficiencies of the team.

Henry, due to his sense of ownership and responsibility, does what needs to be done. He wraps his arms around tasks that demand attention, sometimes without differentiating between effective and ineffective use of his valuable time. He spends too much time working "within" the projects and and not enough time working "on" them – meaning the strategy and direction and planning and mentoring (the stuff a lead usually does) – where his domain knowledge is the most valuable. A quick illustration might be helpful.

ACME has a process that synchronizes files from a watched directory on an internal share out to the servers at the NOC. The process allows customer service to get new content onto the server by simply dropping a file in a local directory. Periodically one of the several dozen directories has a problem. A file to be synched "hangs" and is not copied over. No one knows why, but it is always a file in the same directory. The fix is to log into the synchronization software and reset it. This kick starts the synch and the file is then copied.

While Henry was touring one of his estates in the low countries this problem re-occurred. A ticket was written and a developer (doubling as Sys-Admin) looked at it but could not readily ascertain what was happening or find a way to fix it. The result was a note back to customer service that this task would have to wait till Henry the Armada returned from Denmark.

This event is not an isolated sort of event – Henry getting called in to save the day because he knows all of the who, what, when and how. So let's note a few things at work here in the aftermath.

Wrong Resource? The first question is probably, "why is a software programmer troubleshooting file synchronization?" There is a case where that is necessary – usually when a team is too tiny to have a lead at all. That's not the case here so, is this the best use of a key resource?

Documented Process? Is there a place where developers can go and search for troubleshooting tips on the synch process? This was not a new problem, it occurs periodically. The fix should be routine and documented so that anyone tasked with support, even a developer, could resolve the issue. By the second time someone had to fix this he or she should have opened a wiki page for "server content file synchronization" and added a header called "troubleshooting" along with mitigation steps.

Troubleshooting Ownership? If this had been one of my team members who bailed until "Henry comes back from hunting grouse" I would have questions – and not just "what in the ham sandwich is a grouse?" This is not the sort of problem that has the potential to bring down the server or cause other problems down the road – i.e. it's a manageable, solvable problem with the knowledge at hand, even if you know nothing about the synching process. For example, a developer or sys-admin could copy the file directly to the server.

This brings to mind a third related question. Why are the developers tasked with support bailing on such a simple issue? There are probably two reasons.

• Empowerment – They did not feel empowered to resolve the issue. Perhaps they feared being locked in the Tower of London if their solution was not the one Henry endorsed. If this is the case then some mentoring is in order and some rethinking about roles.
• Passivity and intransigence – in large applications developers "get away" with punting. Software is a black box to most end users and developers can narrow their focus down to just the tasks they most enjoy or that they are the most comfortable with. In those situations and given a superstar resource (Henry) who knows and does everything that needs to be done through his own high level sense of responsibility, developers do not reflect the same urgency of end users on bugs and service issues – knowing it will be resolved without holding them to account. Note – this matters if you are going to have your developers supporting end users. They have to adopt urgency and take ownership of an issue.

Also note that Henry's role (and personality) serve as an enabler for this to occur. As long as he's the repository of knowledge and the chief fixer we can't resolve this problem. Fixes, routines, process idiosyncrasies and procedures belong to institutional knowledge, not individual knowledge. His role actually makes him a bottleneck for work and support rather than shortening the time to fix and deploy things. His developers are less productive than they could be because he is so good at his job.

I call this team model the "superstar programmer". One guy is head and shoulders above everyone else, knows more, does more and everyone orbits around him. He does everything with excellence and alacrity but has so much on his plate that his speed and knowledge are self-defeating.

Teams matter. To get the most out of them they have to be organized around both talent and personal growth. Henry is doing too many things and especially too many trivial operational things that could be done by anyone. Those operational things need to be documented.

Let's discuss team productivity. Many people are surprised at the math of team development. If I can gain 150 hours of development, per month, from a single developer I should, theoretically, be able to get 300 hours per month out of 2 developers, 450 hours out of 4 etc. Reality doesn't work that way. A team is a network of individuals who work toward goals together. They must interact so as not to overlap. They have to meet and plan. You may not be able to divide the work up into discreet 150-hour chunks. With each new team member this problem is exacerbated as new connections, meetings, planning and divisions are made. So, a team of 5 developers may be 60 or 75 percent as effective as a team of 1 or 2. At some point economies of scale kick in and the productivity curve levels off. But the pattern resembles this chart.

Note that this inefficiency is a healthy curve. If you have done well at building your team you can expect this reduced level of productivity as the best possible outcome.

But what happens when have a rock star model? At 3 developers your rock star is managing the tasks and responsibility of his own work plus 2. At 4 developers the problem is at a breaking point. The curve dips down. There is not enough supporting work to divide up among the secondary developers. The rock star takes on more and more of the mission critical work himself. Support tasks and management tasks build up and your major talent becomes a fireman. His whole world is putting out fires all day long and he is behind the curve on each project and task trying to juggle assignments while he's still doing what he's always done.

The Fix

This is why teams and institutional organization really matter. Evolution is fine for birds but software developers tend to propagate mutations that are less rather than more beneficial. Make sure knowledge is systemetized and institutional. Don't be seduced by the superstar. To get the most out of her or him you will need to build a well supported system - otherwise she will fly off the rails as you allow her to take ownserhip of everything. Finally, prioritize between the urgent and the important. If you do have a superstar, chances are your best use of his talents will be at a higher level than troubleshooting operational issues - unless he's a sys-admin at heart (in which case hang on to him like grim death).

ColdFusion SFTP and FTPS Secure Connection Failure

I have seen a lot more people asking questions about making SFTP or FTPS secure connections from ColdFusion using the <CFFTP> tag. They are trying to figure out why they cannot make a connection. Often the error is "Algorithm negotiation fail" or "Connection Error". People are posting their questions on many support forums including Adobes forums and their new ColdFusion Community Portal. This is a problem people are experiencing in ColdFusion 10 and ColdFusion 11.

In the last few years we've seen a huge shift in SSL/TLS security including the removal of older less secure protocols and forcing secure connections to use the newer stronger protocols with stronger TLS certificates and stronger encryption cyphers. As such older systems need to be upgraded to handle the newer security protocols. More recently plain old unsecure FTP portals have been the focus of change to SFTP or FTPS.

At CF Webtools we've run into this same problem several times with multiple clients. It was so much of a problem that I needed to spend some dedicated time to see how we could resolve this issue.

The first thing I discovered is that this issue is a known "bug" that has been reported to Adobe. It's been a long known issue and somehow the fix which is in ColdFusion 2016 has not been included in an update for earlier ColdFusion versions. However, Adobe has affirmed to me that this fix is scheduled for an upcoming update.

Because it was fixed in ColdFusion 2016 I was able to inspect the included jar files to see if the one that handles CFFTP or secure communications was newer than the one(s) in ColdFusion 11. What I found is that jsch-0.1.44m.jar had been replaced by jsch-0.1.52m.jar. The JSCH jar library is the library that handles Java Secure Channel communications. "JSch allows you to connect to an sshd server and use port forwarding, X11 forwarding, file transfer, etc., and you can integrate its functionality into your own Java programs."

After seeing this was upgraded I had an ah-ha moment and figured it was worth a try to copy this newer version into my ColdFusion 11 test server and see what happened. The new version is in ./ColdFusion2016/cfusion/lib folder. You can download the free ColdFusion 2016 Developer Edition and install it anywhere so you can get access to the updated jar file. Once you have the new jar file copy it into ColdFusion 11. The proper way to do this is to remove or rename the old jar file version in your ColdFusion11/cfusion (or instance name)/lib folder then copy the new jar file version into the same folder. Then start or restart ColdFusion 11. That's it. You're done. The bug is fixed and you're good to go with SFTP or FTPS using <CFFTP> in ColdFusion 11.

This is not an approved fix from Adobe. I do not know if there is some unknown issue that could be created by doing this. However, I do know that everyone I've talked to that has tried this has had their secure FTP issues resolved. Additionally I have not tried this 'fix' in ColdFusion 10. However, if you are running into this issue with ColdFusion 10 it's worth the minimal effort to give it a try.

If you need someone to make this change on your ColdFusion server then contact us, we can help. CF Webtools is here to fill your needs and solve your problems. If you have a perplexing issue with ColdFusion servers, code, connections, or if you need help upgrading your VM or patching your server (or anything else) our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations @ cfwebtools.com.

Connect ColdFusion JDBC to Sybase SQL Anywhere 16

This is something that might not come up often, but every once in a while we have to connect to a Sybase database. This is a built in feature in the Enterprise version of ColdFusion. However, if you have the Standard version of ColdFusion you have to manually add the JDBC jar file and build the connection string by hand. This is easy to do once you have the correct information and correct format of the connection string. Finding that correct information was nearly impossible and required a lot of trial and error.

Here's the case we had to resolve at CF Webtools. One of our clients has been using ColdFusion and Sybase for ages. For the record this is Sybase SQL Anywhere 16. For those that are not aware SAP owns Sybase thus the official name is SAP SQL Anywhere 16. For the longest time they were using ODBC connectors and older versions of ColdFusion on older Windows servers. More recently they have upgraded to ColdFusion 11 on newer Windows servers and were still trying to make the connections to Sybase via ODBC. This is a large multi-tenant operation in which there are hundreds of databases on the Sybase servers. Yes, plural servers. There are two servers that are replicated and handle failover. This means the ColdFusion Datasource connection also needs to handle failover. With ODBC failover is handled by Microsoft ODBC settings. With JDBC we had to setup failover in the JDBC connection string.

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How to handle TLS1.2 for ColdFusion 9 and Older

The upcoming Authorize.NET switch to using TLS 1.2 only has a lot of people scrambling to get their servers updated. This has been a long planned transition at Authorize.NET and at many/most/all other payment processing companies. The inevitable facts are that TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are outdated and they are going away. CF Webtools we have been preparing for this inevitable day for the past few years.

ColdFusion 9.0.n is not tested to work on Java 1.8 and I have had cases were certain features of ColdFusion 9 did not work with Java 1.8. I have not tried any older versions of ColdFusion on Java 1.8 and I'm not going to. Adobe has not certified any versions of ColdFusion older than version 10 Update 14 (or ColdFusion 11 Update 2 and older). All of that being said, there is a workaround that uses a 3rd party commercial solution to make TLS 1.2 connections from ColdFusion 9. It works well, but I do not recommend that as a long term solution. The preferred long term solution is upgrading the server(s) and ColdFusion version to currently supported versions. This way there will be security updates to help protect against new threats. The commercial third-party CFX tag will require recoding the CFHTTP calls for the new CFX tag. The tag is CFX_HTTP5 and it is available here.

Follow the installation instructions that comes with the download and then you will have to recode your CFHTTP calls similar to the examples below. The code examples are for the older Authorize.NET Advanced Integration Method (AIM) API calls that you are most likely using in your older ColdFusion CFHTTP calls.

To refactor your code you will want to do something like this.

The code is a minor change and relatively easy to do. I've tested this method in a production environment and it works fine. I do not recommend this as a long term solution. The preferred long term solution is upgrading the server(s) and ColdFusion version to currently supported versions. This way there will be security updates to help protect against new threats. If you are on ColdFusion 10 or 11 then the best option is to install the ColdFusion patches and upgrade the Java version to 1.8 then you will be good to go. If you need an experience ColdFusion developer to make these changes then please do contact us, we will be happy to assist.

The CFX_HTTP5 tag uses WinHTTP which is a built into Windows PROXY server. Here is where part of the problem exists. Microsoft didn't update WinHTTP on Windows 2008 Standard SP2. They've only updated it for Windows 2008 R2 and up. See this update (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3140245/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-a-default-secure-protocols-in). This leaves us not being able to use CFX_HTTP5 on Windows 2008 Standard and older.

This is one more friendly reminder to make sure your ColdFusion servers are patched! Either patch them yourself, have your hosting provider patch them. If you need help upgrading your VM or patching your server (or anything else) our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.

CAVEATS:

• This fix will not work for Windows 2003 Server, for any version of ColdFusion, as there is no support from Microsoft for TLS 1.1 or 1.2 in this server version.
• This fix will not work for Windows 2008 Standard Server (not R2), for ColdFusion 9.0.n and older, as there is no support from Microsoft for TLS 1.1 or 1.2 for WinHTTP in this server version.

Authorize.NET Temporarily Ending TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.0 Support

At CF Webtools we have been preparing for this inevitable day for the past few years. We've been upgrading our clients servers and services to handle TLS 1.2 calls to Authorize.Net and other third party processors for a while now. Recently Authorize.Net announced a "Temporary Disablement of TLS 1.0/1.1" for "a few hours on January 30, 2018 and then again on February 8, 2018." This is in preparation for the final disablement of TLS1.0/1.1 on February 28, 2018.

As you may be aware, new PCI DSS requirements state that all payment systems must disable earlier versions of TLS protocols. These older protocols, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, are highly vulnerable to security breaches and will be disabled by Authorize.Net on February 28, 2018.

To help you identify if you're using one of the older TLS protocols, Authorize.Net will temporarily disable those connections for a few hours on January 30, 2018 and then again on February 8, 2018.

Based on the API connection you are using, on either one of these two days you will not be able to process transactions for a short period of time. If you don't know which API you're using, your solution provider or development partner might be a good resource to help identify it. This disablement will occur on one of the following dates and time:

• Akamai-enabled API connections will occur on January 30, 2018 between 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM Pacific time.
• All other API connections will occur on February 8, 2018 between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM Pacific time.

Merchants using TLS 1.2 by these dates will not be affected by the temporary disablement. We strongly recommend that connections still using TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1 be updated as soon as possible to the stronger TLS 1.2 protocol.

This means that if you are using older methods to make calls to Authorize.Net that are not capable of making TLS 1.2 connections then you will NOT be able to process credit card transactions.

This affects ALL ColdFusion versions 9.0.2 and older! This also affects ColdFusion 10 Update 17 and older. If your server is running any of these older versions of ColdFusion and your server is processing credit cards with Authorize.Net then this advisory applies to your server.

CF Webtools has been successfully mitigating this issue for clients servers for the past couple years and we are very experienced in resolving these security related issues. In a previous blog post I tested which SSL/TLS levels were supported by various ColdFusion versions on various Java versions and produced an easy to read chart.

If your ColdFusion server is affected by this or if you do not know if your ColdFusion server is affected by this then please contact us (much) sooner than later. Our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.