[keycloak-user] Securely setting admin passwords

Thu Feb 18 12:14:12 EST 2016

It's security vs usability as usual. Allowing passing the password directly
is convenient for developers, for Docker image, for provisioning tools,
etc.. So we're not going to remove that it's required, but I do appreciate
that if not used correctly it's a potential security risk. The worst case
scenario here is really that someone gets an admins favorite password, as
someone that has access to getting the bash history of that particular user
will also be able to run the add-user script themselves. So if the admin
wants to print his favorite password in clear text in the bash history we
should not stop him.

It's not our responsibility to clear the bash history, so we should not do
that either.

On 18 February 2016 at 16:53, Bruno Oliveira <bruno at abstractj.org> wrote:

> It's about balance. I'm not arguing here against it, I just don't see how
> it could strengthen security. Nothing will stop people to get their own gun
> and automate it with stdin :)
>
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 12:45 PM Stan Silvert <ssilvert at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2/18/2016 9:29 AM, Bruno Oliveira wrote:
>>
>> I can be wrong, but this is not only our responsibility. For example, on
>> Linux you are prompted for the password with passwd, but at the same time
>> you could circumvent this using: echo 12345678 | sudo passwd admin --stdin.
>>
>> In this scenario security auditors won't blame the OS for this, but
>> pretty much sysadmins and bad security practices. Anyways, whatever people
>> think is the best, I'm fine.
>>
>> I agree with you there.  In that case you are doing something extra to
>> shoot yourself in the foot.  We can't guard against that.
>>
>> We just shouldn't put the gun in your hand.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 12:18 PM Stan Silvert <ssilvert at redhat.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/18/2016 9:10 AM, Bruno Oliveira wrote:
>>>
>>> I think the Jira created by Stian pretty much fixes the problem. Nope?
>>>
>>> Stian's JIRA says that if it is not specified on the command line then
>>> do the prompt.  But if we still allow setting it from the command line then
>>> the password can still be saved to the log in plain text.  Security
>>> auditors will always frown on that.
>>>
>>> So I'm saying we should either disallow setting on the command line or
>>> somehow disable saving to the log.  We shouldn't rely on an administrator
>>> to do the right thing.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Something like:
>>>
>>> ./add-user-keycloak.sh -u user
>>> Password: ******
>>>
>>> Or
>>>
>>> ./add-user-keycloak-sh
>>> Username: joe
>>> Password: ******
>>>
>>> If this can't fix the issue, is also possible to disable bash_history
>>> temporarily. But I wouldn't take this route, because this is pretty much
>>> system administration responsibility.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:47 AM Stan Silvert <ssilvert at redhat.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2/18/2016 2:15 AM, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 17 February 2016 at 17:09, Aikeaguinea <aikeaguinea at xsmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It seems the add-user.sh  script for changing the admin password only
>>>>> accepts the password as a -p command-line parameter. This would expose
>>>>> the password in the command history, so I'd prefer not to use the
>>>>> command in its current form.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's a mistake we'll fix that. If not specified it should prompt for
>>>> it. Added https://issues.jboss.org/browse/KEYCLOAK-2501
>>>>
>>>> After attending several security talks the last couple of days, I've
>>>> become rather sensitized to this kind of issue.  I feel quite strongly that
>>>> we should never allow the password to be written to history in plain
>>>> text.   I'm also afraid it could cause us to flunk government
>>>> certifications.
>>>>
>>>> On Windows, this really isn't a problem because command history is not
>>>> saved.  After a CMD session ends, the history is lost (unless you install
>>>> some third-party tool).
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps there is a way to temporarily disable logging of command
>>>> history in the add-user-keycloak.sh?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there another way to do this?
>>>>>
>>>>> The situation is even more complicated with Docker, since running the
>>>>> script to change the Wildfly admin password requires restarting the
>>>>> server, which shuts down the container. If you have an autoscaling
>>>>> group, the container that gets brought up is not the container where
>>>>> you
>>>>> changed the password, but instead the original container. This seems to
>>>>> mean that the only way to have Keycloak run in Dockers in an
>>>>> autoscaling
>>>>> group is to bake the admin passwords into the Docker image beforehand.
>>>>> This isn't ideal; less so if the only way to add those passwords during
>>>>> build time is to run the shell script that exposes the password on the
>>>>> command line.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> You need to set the password once for your database. This can be done
>>>> prior to accessing the admin console the first time. Take a look at
>>>> https://github.com/jboss-dockerfiles/keycloak/blob/master/server/README.md,
>>>> you can use docker exec to do this.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>
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