# How to secure node-to-node communication?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 23, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862 "2015-09-23T19:41:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GordonM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@GordonM](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/GordonM)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862/1 "2015-09-23T19:41:10Z")

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After reading many tutorials, I have successfully secured HTTP access to my elasticsearch cluster by using nginx to reverse proxy http traffic through an ssl connection that requires basic auth. But I have not been able to find a tutorial on how to secure node-to-node communication. Unfortunately, I am quite the beginner at devops, so I don’t know where to begin.

I thought to use the same nginx setup, but the elasticsearch.yml does not have a setting for specifying basic auth username and passwords AFIK (like the kibana.yml does), so while I might encrypt communications, it would not be password protected, meaning (I guess?) a malicious node or user might still gain access or at least view unencrypted traffic.

The only alternative I came up with is to whitelist other elasticsearch node IPs, but this seems like a last resort, especially since the IPs may change frequently.

Is there a basic guide somewhere that discusses this? I’ve searched for the past 2 days but could not find one. There are many guides on securing http communication from a USER to the elasticsearch cluster, but none that I can find on node-to-node communication. If no guide is available, maybe just a finger in the right direction.

(I know Shield offers this, but my needs are limited to just encryption and auth for a single user.)

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**Author:** ![GordonM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@GordonM](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/GordonM)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862/2 "2015-09-26T21:29:30Z")

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Still trying to work on this.

Is node-to-node communication already secure or is it in the clear?

I will be running this on AWS or VPS's.

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**Author:** ![GordonM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@GordonM](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/GordonM)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862/3 "2015-10-02T21:59:09Z")

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Still trying to make headway on this a week later. ANY help would be appreciated. (Even a gentle pointing somewhere else would be very helpful to me.)

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**Author:** ![rusty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f17d59/32.png) [@rusty](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rusty)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2015, 11:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862/4 "2015-10-05T11:15:02Z")

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Seems to be unencrypted, take a look at [this](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/announcing-a-wireshark-dissector-for-elasticsearch/20194) and [this](https://wiki.wireshark.org/Elasticsearch)

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-secure-node-to-node-communication/29862/5 "2017-07-05T23:46:45Z")

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