[keycloak-dev] Cluster security

[Stian Thorgersen]

AUTH in JGroups only authenticates nodes that join a group. Nodes will
discard messages that are not sent by a member of the group. However,
someone could in theory eavesdrop on the messages and pick up the id
assigned to a member of the group, they could then send a
message masquerading as a member of the group.

We don't send any sensitive information through the cluster so even if
someone was able to read messages sent to the cluster they would not be
able to obtain anything valuable. Further there's very little a malicious
node could do by sending fake messages to the cluster. With regards to
realms, clients and users they would only be able to send invalidation
messages, forcing nodes to re-load the data from the database. For sessions
they could in theory create new user sessions, but these would not have any
use as cookies and tokens are signed by the realms private key, so the fake
sessions wouldn't have any use.

In summary enabling auth should be sufficient and encryption should not be
required as long as you use the default clustering setup
(invalidation-cache for realm, users and clients).

On 12 November 2015 at 08:52, Stian Thorgersen <sthorger at redhat.com> wrote:

> I believe enabling auth is sufficient, but I'm not 100% sure. I've sent an
> email to JGroups mailing list to confirm and I'll let you know.
>
> On 11 November 2015 at 23:05, Matthew Casperson <
> matthew.casperson at autogeneral.com.au> wrote:
>
>> The docs state that "By default there's nothing to prevent unauthorized
>> nodes from joining the cluster and sending potentially malicious messages
>> to the cluster." (
>> http://keycloak.github.io/docs/userguide/keycloak-server/html/clustering.html
>> )
>>
>> Is this still the case if the jgroups stack in Wildfly has implemented
>> the AUTH protocol? For example, the Openshift Wildfly config looks
>> something like this:
>>
>>     <stack name="tcp">
>>         <transport type="TCP" socket-binding="jgroups-tcp">
>>             <property name="external_addr">${env.OPENSHIFT_GEAR_DNS}</property>
>>             <property name="external_port">${env.OPENSHIFT_WILDFLY_CLUSTER_PROXY_PORT}</property>
>>             <property name="bind_port">${env.OPENSHIFT_WILDFLY_CLUSTER_PORT}</property>
>>             <property name="bind_addr">${env.OPENSHIFT_WILDFLY_IP}</property>
>>             <property name="defer_client_bind_addr">true</property>
>>         </transport>
>>         <protocol type="TCPPING">
>>             <property name="timeout">30000</property>
>>             <property name="initial_hosts">${env.OPENSHIFT_WILDFLY_CLUSTER}</property>
>>             <property name="port_range">0</property>
>>             <property name="num_initial_members">1</property>
>>         </protocol>
>>         <protocol type="MERGE2"/>
>>         <protocol type="FD"/>
>>         <protocol type="VERIFY_SUSPECT"/>
>>         <protocol type="BARRIER"/>
>>         <protocol type="pbcast.NAKACK"/>
>>         <protocol type="UNICAST2"/>
>>         <protocol type="pbcast.STABLE"/>
>>         <protocol type="AUTH">
>>             <property name="auth_class">org.jgroups.auth.MD5Token</property>
>>             <property name="token_hash">SHA</property>
>>             <property name="auth_value">${env.OPENSHIFT_SECRET_TOKEN}</property>
>>         </protocol>
>>         <protocol type="pbcast.GMS"/>
>>         <protocol type="UFC"/>
>>         <protocol type="MFC"/>
>>         <protocol type="FRAG2"/>
>>         <!--protocol type="pbcast.STATE_TRANSFER"/>
>>         <protocol type="pbcast.FLUSH"/-->
>>     </stack>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Matthew Casperson*
>> *Senior Front End Developer*
>> Technology, Space & Distribution
>> Auto & General Holdings Pty Ltd
>> P: 07) 3377 8751 (Direct: 3377 8751)
>> F: 07) 3377 8833
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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