Verifying if https is being used for RDS connections

Hello,

Your approach should be two-fold. First, find out from your RDS instance settings that if SSL connections are mandatory (The steps are different between the database engines. See references 1 & 2 below). If they are mandatory, then you do not have to go to the next step, because only SSL connections are allowed, so all incoming successful database connections must be using SSL. If SSL connections are not mandatory, and if you still want to know if any clients connect to the database using SSL, then take the next step. Here too, the actual step will vary between the database engines. For instance, to inspect if a connection is using SSL to connect to an Oracle database, you can take a look at the listener logs. For SQL Server, on the other hand, the view sys. dm_exec_connections could be helpful in determining if a connection is secured. In general, also, all database engines allow you to trace client connections, and you can find out from such traces as well.

If you have a particular database engine in mind, specifying it here can help find the particular way(s) that you are looking for.

1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/UsingWithRDS.SSL.html
2. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/UsingWithRDS.SSL.html

Regards, Govardhanan.