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TLS/SSL Configuration for Clients

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Clients must have support for TLS/SSL to connect to a mongod or a mongos instance that require TLS/SSL connections.

Note

  • The Linux 64-bit legacy x64 binaries of MongoDB do not include support for TLS/SSL.
  • MongoDB disables support for TLS 1.0 encryption on systems where TLS 1.1+ is available. For more details, see Disable TLS 1.0.

Important

A full description of TLS/SSL, PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) certificates, and Certificate Authority is beyond the scope of this document. This page assumes prior knowledge of TLS/SSL as well as access to valid certificates.

MongoDB Shell

The mongo shell provides various TLS/SSL settings, including:

TLS Option (New in 4.2) Notes
--tls Enables TLS/SSL connection.
--tlsCertificateKeyFile Specifies the .pem file that contains the mongo shell’s certificate and key to present to the mongod or mongos instance.
--tlsCertificateKeyFilePassword If the mongo shell’s certificate key file is encrypted.
--tlsCAFile Specifies the Certificate Authority (CA) .pem file for verification of the certificate presented by the mongod or the mongos instance.
--tlsCertificateSelector If running on Windows or macOS, use a certificate from the system certificate store. (New in version 4.0)

For a complete list of the mongo shell’s tls options, see TLS Options.

For TLS/SSL connections, the mongo shell validates the certificate presented by the mongod or mongos instance:

  • The mongo shell verifies that the certificate is from the specified Certificate Authority (--tlsCAFile. If the certificate is not from the specified CA, the mongo shell will fail to connect.

  • The mongo shell verifies that the hostname (specified in --host option or the connection string) matches the SAN (or, if SAN is not present, the CN) in the certificate presented by the mongod or mongos. If SAN is present, mongo does not match against the CN. If the hostname does not match the SAN (or CN), the mongo shell will fail to connect.

    Starting in MongoDB 4.2, when performing comparison of SAN, MongoDB supports comparison of DNS names or IP addresses. In previous versions, MongoDB only supports comparisons of DNS names.

    To connect a mongo shell to a mongod or mongos that requires TLS/SSL, specify the --host option or use a connection string to specify the hostname. All other TLS/SSL options must be specified using the command-line options.

Connect to MongoDB Instances Using Encryption

To connect to a mongod or mongos instance that requires encrypted communication, start the mongo shell with:

For example, consider a mongod instance running on hostname.example.com with the following options:

copy 
mongod --tlsMode requireTLS --tlsCertificateKeyFile <pem>

To connect to the instance, start a mongo shell with the following options:

copy 
mongo --tls --host hostname.example.com --tlsCAFile /etc/ssl/caToValidateServerCertificates.pem

The mongo shell verifies the certificate presented by the mongod instance against the specified hostname and the CA file.

Connect to MongoDB Instances that Require Client Certificates

To connect to a mongod or mongos that requires CA-signed client certificates, start the mongo shell with:

For example, consider a mongod instance running on hostname.example.com with the following options:

copy 
mongod --tlsMode requireTLS --tlsCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/mongodb.pem --tlsCAFile /etc/ssl/caToValidateClientCertificates.pem

To connect to the instance, start a mongo shell with the following options:

copy 
mongo --tls --host hostname.example.com --tlsCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/client.pem --tlsCAFile /etc/ssl/caToValidateServerCertificates.pem

Windows and macOS

To specify a client certificate from the system certificate store, use the --tlsCertificateSelector option instead of --tlsCertificateKeyFile.

If the CA file is also in the system certificate store, you can omit the --tlsCAFile option.

For example, if a certificate with the CN (Common Name) of myclient.example.net and the accompanying CA file are both in the macOS system certificate store, you can connect like this:

copy 
mongo --tls  --host hostname.example.com --tlsCertificateSelector subject="myclient.example.net"

These options are deprecated starting in MongoDB 4.2:

  • --ssl
  • --sslCAFile
  • --sslPEMKeyFile
  • --sslCertificateSelector

If possible, you should use the tls alternatives instead.

Avoid Use of --tlsAllowInvalidCertificates Option

Warning

Although available, avoid using the --tlsAllowInvalidCertificates option if possible. If the use of --tlsAllowInvalidCertificates is necessary, only use the option on systems where intrusion is not possible.

If the mongo shell runs with the --tlsAllowInvalidCertificates option, the mongo shell will not attempt to validate the server certificates. This creates a vulnerability to expired mongod and mongos certificates as well as to foreign processes posing as valid mongod or mongos instances. If you only need to disable the validation of the hostname in the TLS/SSL certificates, see --tlsAllowInvalidHostnames.

MongoDB Atlas, MongoDB Cloud Manager and MongoDB Ops Manager

MongoDB Atlas uses TLS/SSL to encrypt the connections to your databases.

The MongoDB Cloud Manager and Ops Manager Monitoring agents use encrypted communication to gather its statistics. Because the agents already encrypt communications to the MongoDB Cloud Manager/Ops Manager servers, this is just a matter of enabling TLS/SSL support in MongoDB Cloud Manager/Ops Manager on a per host basis.

For more information, see:

MongoDB Drivers

The MongoDB Drivers support encrypted communication. See:

MongoDB Tools

Various MongoDB utility programs support encrypted communication. These tools include:

To use encrypted communication with these tools, use the same tls options as mongosh. See MongoDB Shell.

See also

Configure mongod and mongos for TLS/SSL

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