Is a connection from my SSL-secured server to an RDS instance automatically encrypted when using mysqli_connect?

Question

I'm trying to determine if I need to use mysqli_ssl_set to encrypt my db layer. I have a standard Amazon RDS instance that I'm connecting to with MySQL user and pass, but I'm unsure if that connection is automatically encrypted. My server is SSL-ready, but does that mean mysqli_connect is encrypted by default?

This is my code right now:

$connection = mysqli_connect(self::$host, self::$user, self::$password);
self::$lastConnection = $connection;
$db = "db_prod";
mysqli_select_db($connection, $db);
mysqli_set_charset($connection, "utf8mb4");

Do I need to add in mysqli_ssl_set too?

Answer 1

No, you have to call

mysqli_ssl_set(connection, key, cert, ca, capath, cipher)

or

$mysqli -> ssl_set(key, cert, ca, capath, cipher)

see manual https://www.php.net/manual/de/mysqli.ssl-set.php

or https://www.w3schools.com/php/func_mysqli_ssl_set.asp

• Tony Friz: I'm using Letsencrypt for my SSL. Would you happen to know how to fill in mysqli_ssl_set? I tried this: mysqli_ssl_set($con, "/var/lib/mysql/privkey.pem", "/var/lib/mysql/cert.pem", "/var/lib/mysql/chain.pem", NULL, NULL); but it doesn't work.
• nbk: have you all those files correctly add to the server . Run SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%ssl%';and see also there could be a tls problem.