By gluc
As described in my Shiny overview post, there are different versions of Shiny server. Among other limitations, the open source flavor does not come with built-in support for https and user access control. In this post, we explain how you can nevertheless turn your Shiny Open Source server into a Shiny https server.
This tutorial builds on previous tutorials, namely:
Setting up an AWS instance for R
Installing Shiny Server on AWS
In a future post, we will explain how you can secure Shiny Server Open Source with user/password access.
This tutorial builds on Amazon AWS. But it is easy to adopt it to other cloud services or a local machine.
Https, what’s that?
Https is a protocol that encrypts your communication with a web server. For a one-minute definition, see here. Https can be useful for two things:
- So nobody can read the communication between you and the web server
- So you can be sure that you are really really talking to the desired web server, and not to a fake (a so-called man-in-the-middle)
What is an SSL certificate?
An SSL certificate binds together a domain name, a publisher of data or services, and a cryptographic key. In simple terms, it makes sure that when you connect to www.gmail.com your are really connected with google, and not with somebody who pretends to be google.
An SSL certificate is required for any https communication. Typically, you would buy an SSL certificate from a certification authority like VeriSign, Comodo, digicert, or many others. They come in various flavors and prices, and your browser typically reacts differently based on the strength of the certificate (e.g. by displaying an orange lock, a green lock, or a warning page).
For the sake of this tutorial, we will create our own SSL certificate. It will make sure that the communication to our Shiny server is encrypted. However, …read more
Source:: r-bloggers.com