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| layout | page_title | sidebar_current | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| docs | Identity - Secrets Engines | docs-secrets-identity | The Identity secrets engine for Vault manages client identities. |
Identity Secrets Engine
Name: identity
The Identity secrets engine is the identity management solution for Vault. It
internally maintains the clients who are recognized by Vault. Each client is
internally termed as an Entity. An entity can have multiple Aliases. For
example, a single user who has accounts in both Github and LDAP, can be mapped
to a single entity in Vault that has 2 aliases, one of type Github and one of
type LDAP. When a client authenticates via any of the credential backend
(except the Token backend), Vault creates a new entity and attaches a new
alias to it, if a corresponding entity doesn't already exist. The entity identifier will
be tied to the authenticated token. When such tokens are put to use, their
entity identifiers are audit logged, marking a trail of actions performed by
specific users.
Identity store allows operators to manage the entities in Vault. Entities can be created and aliases can be tied to entities, via the ACL'd API. There can be policies set on the entities which adds capabilities to the tokens that are tied to entity identifiers. The capabilities granted to tokens via the entities are an addition to the existing capabilities of the token and not a replacement. The capabilities of the token that get inherited from entities are computed dynamically at request time. This provides flexibility in controlling the access of tokens that are already issued.
This secrets engine will be mounted by default. This secrets engine cannot be disabled or moved.
Concepts
Entities and Aliases
Each user will have multiple accounts with various identity providers. Users
can now be mapped as Entities and their corresponding accounts with
authentication providers can be mapped as Aliases. In essence, each entity is
made up of zero or more aliases.
Entity Management
Entities in Vault do not automatically pull identity information from anywhere. It needs to be explicitly managed by operators. This way, it is flexible in terms of administratively controlling the number of entities to be synced against Vault. In some sense, Vault will serve as a cache of identities and not as a source of identities.
Entity Policies
Vault policies can be assigned to entities which will grant additional permissions to the token on top of the existing policies on the token. If the token presented on the API request contains an identifier for the entity and if that entity has a set of policies on it, then the token will be capable of performing actions allowed by the policies on the entity as well.
This is a paradigm shift in terms of when the policies of the token get evaluated. Before identity, the policy names on the token were immutable (not the contents of those policies though). But with entity policies, along with the immutable set of policy names on the token, the evaluation of policies applicable to the token through its identity will happen at request time. This also adds enormous flexibility to control the behavior of already issued tokens.
Its important to note that the policies on the entity are only a means to grant additional capabilities and not a replacement for the policies on the token. To know the full set of capabilities of the token with an associated entity identifier, the policies on the token should be taken into account.
Mount Bound Aliases
Vault supports multiple authentication backends and also allows enabling the same type of authentication backend on different mount paths. The alias name of the user will be unique within the backend's mount. But identity store needs to uniquely distinguish between conflicting alias names across different mounts of these identity providers. Hence, the alias name in combination with the authentication backend mount's accessor, serve as the unique identifier of an alias.
Implicit Entities
Operators can create entities for all the users of an auth mount beforehand and assign policies to them, so that when users login, the desired capabilities to the tokens via entities are already assigned. But if that's not done, upon a successful user login from any of the authentication backends, Vault will create a new entity and assign an alias against the login that was successful.
Note that the tokens created using the token authentication backend will not have an associated identity information. Logging in using the authentication backends is the only way to create tokens that have a valid entity identifiers.
Identity Auditing
If the token used to make API calls have an associated entity identifier, it will be audit logged as well. This leaves a trail of actions performed by specific users.
Identity Groups
In version 0.9, Vault identity has support for groups. A group can contain multiple entities as its members. A group can also have subgroups. Policies set on the group is granted to all members of the group. During request time, when the token's entity ID is being evaluated for the policies that it has access to; along with the policies on the entity itself, policies that are inherited due to group memberships are also granted.
Group Hierarchical Permissions
Entities can be direct members of groups, in which case they inherit the policies of the groups they belong to. Entities can also be indirect members of groups. For example, if a GroupA has GroupB as subgroup, then members of GroupB are indirect members of GroupA. Hence, the members of GroupB will have access to policies on both GroupA and GroupB.
External vs Internal Groups
By default, the groups created in identity store are called the internal groups. The membership management of these groups should be carried out manually. A group can also be created as an external group. In this case, the entity membership in the group is managed semi-automatically. External group serves as a mapping to a group that is outside of the identity store. External groups can have one (and only one) alias. This alias should map to a notion of group that is outside of the identity store. For example, groups in LDAP, and teams in GitHub. A username in LDAP, belonging to a group in LDAP, can get its entity ID added as a member of a group in Vault automatically during logins and token renewals. This works only if the group in Vault is an external group and has an alias that maps to the group in LDAP. If the user is removed from the group in LDAP, that change gets reflected in Vault only upon the subsequent login or renewal operation.
API
The Identity secrets engine has a full HTTP API. Please see the Identity secrets engine API for more details.