[keycloak-dev] File-based Vault implementation
Marek Posolda
mposolda at redhat.com
Fri Aug 9 09:02:42 EDT 2019
On 09. 08. 19 14:46, Hynek Mlnarik wrote:
> I agree that certain level of cacheability should be there, however
> its being enabled needs to be decided by an administrator.
>
> If the admin decides to use vault for secrets, we should employ all
> measures for obtaining it only when needed. If they decide a secret is
> safe to cache it in Keycloak, then we should support it. Both modes
> can be implemented for the vault provider (note caching is
> implementation dependent, see below), but here I'd start with the
> strictest and safest option of accessing the vault whenever needed. As
> Sebastian pointed out, the sample implementation might be very fast,
> even though certainly slower than putting a secret directly into one
> of the models. Once this is done, we can work on caching.
Yes, the ideal is if admin can decide if he prefer stronger performance
or security, so ideal is, if caching will be provided in the
VaultProvider. I agree with that. Maybe we can have CacheVaultProvider,
which will just delegate to other providers similarly like we do for
models, but invalidation might be tricky, so not sure...
BTV. question is if for the "paranoid" administrators, who would prefer
the safe path and more memory protection is the MappedByteBuffer good
option? Hopefully it is fine, but just pointing... :)
Marek
>
> Caching the secrets is connected with invalidation and that is
> dependent on actual vault implementation. The secret value can change
> over time, and we'd need to adjust / invalidate the cached value. For
> example if Kubernetes secrets change in the file, they are immediately
> propagated to a running pod, and we should pick up the new value.
> Since this is based on files, we would need to invalidate / reload the
> entry if file modification time changes.
>
> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 10:56 AM Sebastian Laskawiec
> <slaskawi at redhat.com <mailto:slaskawi at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
> At least for File-based Vault implementation, I would like to
> experiment a
> bit with MappedByteBuffers [1] (the PR still contains the old
> code, I'm
> about to update very soon). If that goes well, we should get a sort of
> trade-off between performance (reading the same secret over and
> over should
> be blazing fast) and security (the caller of the vault will obtain
> a secret
> and the override it with random data when it's done using it).
>
> But that's actually a good point - we should run a performance
> test (or
> profile the code using Flight Recorder) once the implementation is
> ready.
>
> [1] https://www.baeldung.com/java-mapped-byte-buffer
>
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 7:24 PM Marek Posolda <mposolda at redhat.com
> <mailto:mposolda at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
> > I am sorry for joining late.
> >
> > I guess you already take performance into account, but still I would
> > like to point it again here. Because usually there is some trade-off
> > between performance and security :)
> >
> > IMO the important question is at which point exactly the vault
> will be
> > called? Will it be directly when particular value (eg. client
> secret) is
> > retrieved from DB, so the secret would be still cached in memory
> as it
> > is today? Or do you want to prevent caching secrets at all? I would
> > personally prefer the first option by default due the better
> performance
> > and eventually allow the second option in case that people prefer
> > stronger security against performance.
> >
> > For example clientSecret is always needed when refreshing token,
> > exchanging code-to-token etc. So if you always need to read the file
> > during each refreshToken request, it is not ideal. I see the
> main point
> > of the vault is to prevent plain-text passwords in DB. The
> prevention of
> > have secrets in memory is not so big priority if it means the
> > significant performance degradation IMO.
> >
> > Marek
> >
> >
> > On 08. 08. 19 14:35, Pedro Igor Silva wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 4:34 AM Sebastian Laskawiec
> <slaskawi at redhat.com <mailto:slaskawi at redhat.com>>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > >> I briefly looked at the SPI and it seems a bit over the top
> comparing to
> > >> what we need. Plus we would create a strong connection
> between Keycloak
> > and
> > >> Elytron Security SPIs and I'm not sure if this is desirable.
> > >>
> > >> Maybe a translation layer (a simple Vault SPI implementation that
> > >> delegates to Elytron SPIs) would be better?
> > >>
> > > Yeah, it is. Like I said, for this particular case your SPI is
> more
> > simple
> > > and you won't get much from Elytron.
> > >
> > >
> > >>> For read-write, you have the key store implementation from
> Elytron that
> > >>> can save you some time. So your credentials are stored more
> securely
> > and
> > >>> you can easily look up them.
> > >>>
> > >> I agree with you here. The write path of the Vault SPI is a
> bit tricky.
> > >> But I'm not sure if that will happen (we will probably see in the
> > future).
> > >>
> > >> My personal vote here is to leave the door open and implement a
> > delegation
> > >> layer to Elytron SPIs. We can leave that as an Experimental
> Feature if
> > we
> > >> want to avoid extensive testing on the product side.
> > >>
> > > I see. If you are not planning to deliver the write path
> anytime soon,
> > > let's talk more about it later.
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> > >
> > >
> > >>
> > >>> I just wanted to let you know about Elytron Credential
> Store. I haven't
> > >>> joined the discussions about the credential store proposal
> so I may be
> > just
> > >>> messing your thread :)
> > >>>
> > >>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 10:35 AM Sebastian Laskawiec <
> > slaskawi at redhat.com <mailto:slaskawi at redhat.com>>
> > >>> wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> The idea sounds interesting to me. Although, having in mind
> our plans
> > >>>> related to Keycloak.next, I'm not sure if we should provide
> it out of
> > the
> > >>>> box.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Perhaps we should provide a community-driven extension (as
> a separate
> > >>>> jar) to use this?
> > >>>>
> > >>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 2:59 PM Pedro Igor Silva
> <psilva at redhat.com <mailto:psilva at redhat.com>>
> > >>>> wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>> Hey Hynek,
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Elytron came into my mind because it provides an SPI for
> plugging
> > >>>>> different implementations based on a SPI [1]. There are
> some OOTB
> > >>>>> implementations such as a keystore-based and map-based.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> You should be able to delegate to other vault types or
> even build
> > your
> > >>>>> own on top of some default implementation. Considering
> that Elytron
> > >>>>> Subsystem is available as a subsystem you also have the
> necessary
> > means to
> > >>>>> manage your credential stores (via CLI, etc).
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> [1]
> > >>>>>
> >
> https://github.com/wildfly-security/wildfly-elytron/blob/1c42623a343e138ac4a31bd5dcfd8d2ccc47633e/credential/store/src/main/java/org/wildfly/security/credential/store/CredentialStoreSpi.java#L35
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 3:37 AM Hynek Mlnarik
> <hmlnarik at redhat.com <mailto:hmlnarik at redhat.com>>
> > >>>>> wrote:
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>>> Hi Pedro,
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> Elytron Cred Store has been considered, any details would be
> > >>>>>> appreciated. Specifically, does it support delegation to
> other
> > vault types?
> > >>>>>> Is it able to delegate access to other vault types, e.g.
> Kubernetes
> > >>>>>> credentials? See [1] for further context.
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> Pros and cons of other vault implementations are highly
> appreciated
> > as
> > >>>>>> well. The number of built-in implementations mus be kept
> low (one
> > or two)
> > >>>>>> for maintenance reasons, so we need convincing arguments for
> > including any
> > >>>>>> in Keycloak. On the other hand, support for other vault
> types can be
> > >>>>>> contributed as a Community Extension [2].
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> --Hynek
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> [1]
> > >>>>>>
> >
> https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak-community/pull/18#discussion_r304860227
> > >>>>>> [2] https://www.keycloak.org/extensions.html
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 2:55 PM Pedro Igor Silva
> <psilva at redhat.com <mailto:psilva at redhat.com>>
> > >>>>>> wrote:
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> Hi Sebastian,
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> Elytron has a very powerful and flexible Credential
> Store SPI
> > (Peter
> > >>>>>>> can
> > >>>>>>> give more details) that can help managing credentials
> based on
> > keys.
> > >>>>>>> You
> > >>>>>>> could even use an implementation backed by a java key
> store (with
> > >>>>>>> in-memory
> > >>>>>>> support).
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> Wouldn't make sense to use it or at least check how the
> design
> > could
> > >>>>>>> be
> > >>>>>>> improved to fit our requirements?
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> Regards.
> > >>>>>>> Pedro Igor
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 6:39 AM Sebastian Laskawiec <
> > >>>>>>> slaskawi at redhat.com <mailto:slaskawi at redhat.com>>
> > >>>>>>> wrote:
> > >>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> Hey,
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> We are considering an initial, file-based Vault [1]
> implementation
> > >>>>>>> that
> > >>>>>>>> we'll ship out of the box. I imagine a minimum set of
> requirements
> > >>>>>>> as the
> > >>>>>>>> following:
> > >>>>>>>> - Easy to write by hand (for testing)
> > >>>>>>>> - Works out of the box in Kubernetes (Kubernetes can
> mount Secrets
> > >>>>>>> as
> > >>>>>>>> files)
> > >>>>>>>> - Make sure we do not cache file content anywhere, so
> we don't
> > >>>>>>> compromise a
> > >>>>>>>> secret value in Keycloak
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> Essentially, there are two approaches for such an
> implementation.
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> The first option is to put all secrets into a shared file
> > >>>>>>> representing
> > >>>>>>>> key-value pairs (a properties file is a natural
> candidate for such
> > >>>>>>> an
> > >>>>>>>> implementation). This approach very easy to use but
> it's pretty
> > >>>>>>> hard to
> > >>>>>>>> search for a particular key in a file. We would need to
> make sure
> > >>>>>>> that we
> > >>>>>>>> don't cache anything wile parsing the file (in
> BufferedInputStream
> > >>>>>>> for
> > >>>>>>>> example). Such an implementation would also be pretty
> slow, since
> > >>>>>>> whenever
> > >>>>>>>> we'd access the vault for a particular key, we would
> potentially
> > >>>>>>> need to
> > >>>>>>>> search the whole file.
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> The second option is more complicated. Imagine the
> following file
> > >>>>>>> structure
> > >>>>>>>> (inside a vault directory):
> > >>>>>>>> my-secret-1 (secret value in its content)
> > >>>>>>>> my-secret-2 (secret value in its content)
> > >>>>>>>> my-secret-3 (secret value in its content)
> > >>>>>>>> In other words, each key is a file in a vault directory
> and its
> > >>>>>>> content
> > >>>>>>>> corresponds the secret value. Such an implementation is
> not very
> > >>>>>>> easy to
> > >>>>>>>> use as we'd need to create many small files. However,
> it's super
> > >>>>>>> fast for
> > >>>>>>>> searching and we can securely read the value without a
> risk of
> > >>>>>>> compromising
> > >>>>>>>> other secret values provided by the vault.
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> I wonder what do you think about this? My personal take
> on this is
> > >>>>>>> that we
> > >>>>>>>> should provide both implementations. The former (single
> file)
> > would
> > >>>>>>> be used
> > >>>>>>>> in our testsuite (because of simplicity) and the latter
> (multiple
> > >>>>>>> files) in
> > >>>>>>>> production and in Kubernetes.
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> Thanks,
> > >>>>>>>> Sebastian
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>> [1]
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>>
> >
> https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak-community/blob/master/design/secure-credentials-store.md
> > >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> > >>>>>>>> keycloak-dev mailing list
> > >>>>>>>> keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
> <mailto:keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org>
> > >>>>>>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-dev
> > >>>>>>>>
> > >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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