[keycloak-user] Securely setting admin passwords

Aikeaguinea aikeaguinea at xsmail.com
Mon Feb 22 10:10:31 EST 2016 

With regard to Docker, things get more complicated. I believe it's
not just the bash history but the Docker history itself that stores
the commands.

Also, per one of the messages earlier on this chain, it is not advised
to put secrets into Docker environment variables. These are accessible
in many different ways.

*From: *<keycloak-user-bounces at lists.jboss.org> on behalf of Stan
Silvert <ssilvert at redhat.com> *Date: *Thursday, February 18, 2016 at
12:26 PM *To: *"stian at redhat.com" <stian at redhat.com> *Cc: *Stian
Thorgersen <sthorger at redhat.com>, keycloak-user <keycloak-
user at lists.jboss.org> *Subject: *Re: [keycloak-user] Securely setting
admin passwords

On 2/18/2016 12:14 PM, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
> 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.
If there is a way to stop that one command from being saved in the bash
history then we should do it.

At the very least, we should print a warning message to let the
administrator know he has done something that is potentially insecure.

>
> 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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>>>>>>>>> the web
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> keycloak-user mailing list keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-user
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>> keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
>>>>>>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-user
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>
>>
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