open-vault/website/source/docs/secrets/ssh/index.html.md
2017-07-03 12:40:31 -04:00

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docs SSH Secret Backend docs-secrets-ssh The SSH secret backend for Vault generates signed SSH certificates, dynamic SSH keys or One-Time-Passwords.

SSH Secret Backend

Name: ssh

Vault SSH backend tries to solve the problem of managing access to machine infrastructure by providing different ways to issue SSH credentials.

The backend issues in 3 types of credentials: CA signed keys, Dynamic keys and OTP keys. Read and carefully understand all the types before choosing the one which best suits your needs. In relation to the dynamic key and OTP key type, the CA key signing is the simplest and most powerful in terms of setup complexity and in terms of being platform agnostic.

This page will show a quick start for this backend. For detailed documentation on every path, use vault path-help after mounting the backend.


I. CA Key Type

When using this type, an SSH CA signing key is generated or configured at the backend's mount. This key will be used to sign other SSH keys. The private half of the signing key always stays within Vault and the public half is exposed via the API. Each mount of this backend represents a unique signing key pair. It is recommended that the host keys and client keys are signed using different mounts of this backend.

Mount a backend's instance for signing host keys

vault mount -path ssh-host-signer ssh
Successfully mounted 'ssh' at 'ssh-host-signer'!

Mount a backend's instance for signing client keys

vault mount -path ssh-client-signer ssh
Successfully mounted 'ssh' at 'ssh-client-signer'!

Configure the host CA certificate

vault write -f ssh-host-signer/config/ca
Key             Value
---             -----
public_key      ssh-rsa
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

The returned host CA public key should be added to known_hosts file in all client machines with a @cert-authority <domain> prefix, where <domain> can be any value (single host, wildcard domain, wildcard) SSH accepts to define hosts (e.g. @cert-authority *.example.com ssh-rsa AAAA...). This public key can also be retrieved using vault read ssh-host-signer/config/ca.

Configure the client CA certificate

vault write -f ssh-client-signer/config/ca
Key             Value
---             -----
public_key      ssh-rsa
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

The returned client CA public key should be saved in a file that is added to the TrustedUserCAKeys list in the sshd_config file on the host machine:

cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config
...
...
TrustedUserCAKeys /etc/ssh/trusted-user-ca-keys.pem

The client CA public key can also be retrieved later using vault read ssh-client-signer/config/ca.

Allow host certificate to have longer TTLs

vault mount-tune -max-lease-ttl=87600h ssh-host-signer
Successfully tuned mount 'ssh-host-signer'!

Create a role to sign host keys

You'll want to add in some allowed domains and either the allow_subdomains flag, the allow_bare_domains flag, or both.

vault write ssh-host-signer/roles/hostrole ttl=87600h allow_host_certificates=true key_type=ca allowed_domains="localdomain,example.com" allow_subdomains=true
Success! Data written to: ssh-host-signer/roles/hostrole

Create a role to sign client keys

Because of the way that some SSH certificate features are implemented, some common options to this call must be passed in as a map. Vault's CLI does not currently have a native way to pass in map values, so the easiest way to do this is to create a JSON file and use it as the input. In the following example this is used to add the permit-pty extension to the certificate.

{
  "allow_user_certificates": true,
  "allowed_users": "*",
  "default_extensions": [
    {
      "permit-pty": ""
    }
  ],
  "key_type": "ca",
  "default_user": "icecream",
  "ttl": "30m0s"
}
vault write ssh-client-signer/roles/clientrole @clientrole.json
Success! Data written to: ssh-client-signer/roles/clientrole

Sign the host key

You can generate a new key, or you can sign one of the host keys that was autogenerated when SSH was first started up, e.g. /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub.

cat /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub | vault write ssh-host-signer/sign/hostrole public_key=- cert_type=host
Key             Value
---             -----
serial_number   3746eb17371540d9
signed_key      ssh-rsa-cert-v01@openssh.com
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

Set the signed certificate as HostCertificate in sshd_config on the host machine. In order to make things work more automagically (e.g. if you don't want to specifically pick the host key/cert) it's a good idea to call this <key>-cert.pub, e.g. /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key-cert.pub. It's also not a bad idea to specifically pick the HostKey that will be used:

cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config
...
...
TrustedUserCAKeys /etc/ssh/trusted-user-ca-keys.pem
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostCertificate /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key-cert.pub

It's also a good idea to make sure that the permissions on the HostCertificate file are 0640 (on most systems).

Sign the client key

This is any key you want to use, e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub:

cd ~/.ssh

cat id_rsa.pub | vault write ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole public_key=-
Key             Value
---             -----
serial_number   c73f26d2340276aa
signed_key      ssh-rsa-cert-v01@openssh.com
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

Save the signed key in a file (make sure you set the permissions to only be writeable by the owner); if you're saving it along with your public/private key (e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa(.pub)), saving it with -cert.pub (e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa-cert.pub) allows SSH to automatically discover it. Otherwise, you can tell the SSH client where to find it (and the associated private key) by using -i such as ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -i my-signed-cert.pub localhost.

If you want to see the configured extensions, principals, etc., you can use the -L flag to ssh-keygen, e.g. ssh-keygen -Lf ~/.ssh/id_rsa-cert.pub.

SSH into the host machine

ssh -i signed-client-cert.pub username@<IP of remote host>
username@<IP of remote host>:~$

Troubleshooting

If you are not able to successfully make a client connection, looking at SSH server logs is likely to be your best bet. Some known potential issues:

  • If on an SELinux-enforcing system, you may need to adjust related types so that the SSH daemon is able to read it, for instance by adjusting the signed host certificate to be an sshd_key_t type.
  • If you encounter an error on the client indicating "no separate private key for certificate" you may be hitting a bug introduced into OpenSSH version 7.2 and fixed in 7.5. See OpenSSH bug 2617 for details. If you are able to find a workaround without patching OpenSSH, please submit a PR to update this documentation!

II. One-Time-Password (OTP) Type

This backend type allows a Vault server to issue an OTP every time a client wants to SSH into a remote host, using a helper command on the remote host to perform verification.

An authenticated client requests credentials from the Vault server and, if authorized, is issued an OTP. When the client establishes an SSH connection to the desired remote host, the OTP used during SSH authentication is received by the Vault helper, which then validates the OTP with the Vault server. The Vault server then deletes this OTP, ensuring that it is only used once.

Since the Vault server is contacted during SSH connection establishment, every login attempt and the correlating Vault lease information is logged to the audit backend.

See Vault-SSH-Helper for details on the helper.

Drawbacks

The main concern with the OTP backend type is the remote host's connection to Vault; if compromised, an attacker could spoof the Vault server returning a successful request. This risk can be mitigated by using TLS for the connection to Vault and checking certificate validity; future enhancements to this backend may allow for extra security on top of what TLS provides.

Mount the backend

$ vault mount ssh
Successfully mounted 'ssh' at 'ssh'!

Create a Role

Create a role with the key_type parameter set to otp. All of the machines represented by the role's CIDR list should have helper properly installed and configured.

$ vault write ssh/roles/otp_key_role \
    key_type=otp \
    default_user=username \
    cidr_list=x.x.x.x/y,m.m.m.m/n
Success! Data written to: ssh/roles/otp_key_role

Create a Credential

Create an OTP credential for an IP of the remote host that belongs to otp_key_role.

$ vault write ssh/creds/otp_key_role ip=x.x.x.x
Key            	Value
lease_id       	ssh/creds/otp_key_role/73bbf513-9606-4bec-816c-5a2f009765a5
lease_duration 	600
lease_renewable	false
port           	22
username       	username
ip             	x.x.x.x
key            	2f7e25a2-24c9-4b7b-0d35-27d5e5203a5c
key_type       	otp

Establish an SSH session

$ ssh username@localhost
Password: <Enter OTP>
username@ip:~$

Automate it!

A single CLI command can be used to create a new OTP and invoke SSH with the correct parameters to connect to the host.

$ vault ssh -role otp_key_role username@x.x.x.x
OTP for the session is `b4d47e1b-4879-5f4e-ce5c-7988d7986f37`
[Note: Install `sshpass` to automate typing in OTP]
Password: <Enter OTP>

The OTP will be entered automatically using sshpass if it is installed.

$ vault ssh -role otp_key_role -strict-host-key-checking=no username@x.x.x.x
username@<IP of remote host>:~$

Note: sshpass cannot handle host key checking. Host key checking can be disabled by setting -strict-host-key-checking=no.


III. Dynamic Key Type (Deprecated)

Note: There are several serious drawbacks (detailed below), including some with security implications, inherent in this method. Because of these drawbacks, the Vault team recommends use of the CA or OTP types whenever possible. Care should be taken with respect to the above issues with any deployments using the dynamic key type.

When using this type, the administrator registers a secret key with appropriate sudo privileges on the remote machines; for every authorized credential request, Vault creates a new SSH key pair and appends the newly-generated public key to the authorized_keys file for the configured username on the remote host. Vault uses a configurable install script to achieve this.

The backend does not prompt for sudo passwords; the NOPASSWD option for sudoers should be enabled at all remote hosts for the Vault administrative user.

The private key returned to the user will be leased and can be renewed if desired. Once the key is given to the user, Vault will not know when it gets used or how many time it gets used. Therefore, Vault WILL NOT and cannot audit the SSH session establishments.

When the credential lease expires, Vault removes the secret key from the remote machine.

Drawbacks

The dynamic key type has several serious drawbacks:

  1. Audit logs are unreliable: Vault can only log when users request credentials, not when they use the given keys. If user A and user B both request access to a machine, and are given a lease valid for five minutes, it is impossible to know whether two accesses to that user account on the remote machine were A, A; A, B; B, A; or B, B.
  2. Generating dynamic keys consumes entropy: Unless equipped with a hardware entropy generating device, a machine can quickly run out of entropy when generating SSH keys. This will cause further requests for various Vault operations to stall until more entropy is available, which could take a significant amount of time, after which the next request for a new SSH key will use the generated entropy and cause stalling again.
  3. This type makes connections to client hosts; when this happens the host key is not verified.

sudo

In order to adjust the authorized_keys file for the desired user, Vault connects via SSH to the remote machine as a separate user, and uses sudo to gain the privileges required. An example sudoers file is shown below.

File: /etc/sudoers

# This is a sample sudoers statement; you should modify it
# as appropriate to satisfy your security needs.
vaultadmin   ALL=(ALL)NOPASSWD: ALL

Configuration

Next, infrastructure configuration must be registered with Vault via roles. First, however, the shared secret key must be specified.

Mount the backend

$ vault mount ssh
Successfully mounted 'ssh' at 'ssh'!

Registering the shared secret key

Register a key with a name; this key must have administrative capabilities on the remote hosts.

$ vault write ssh/keys/dev_key \
    key=@dev_shared_key.pem

Create a Role

Next, create a role. All of the machines contained within this CIDR block list should be accessible using the registered shared secret key.

$ vault write ssh/roles/dynamic_key_role \
    key_type=dynamic \
    key=dev_key \
    admin_user=username \
    default_user=username \
    cidr_list=x.x.x.x/y
Success! Data written to: ssh/roles/dynamic_key_role

cidr_list is a comma separated list of CIDR blocks for which a role can generate credentials. If this is empty, the role can only generate credentials if it belongs to the set of zero-address roles.

Zero-address roles, configured via /ssh/config/zeroaddress endpoint, takes comma separated list of role names that can generate credentials for any IP address.

Use the install_script option to provide an install script if the remote hosts do not resemble a typical Linux machine. The default script is compiled into the Vault binary, but it is straight forward to specify an alternate. The script takes three arguments which are explained in the comments.

To see the default, see linux_install_script.go

Create a credential

Create a dynamic key for an IP of the remote host that is covered by dynamic_key_role's CIDR list.

$ vault write ssh/creds/dynamic_key_role ip=x.x.x.x
Key            	Value
lease_id       	ssh/creds/dynamic_key_role/8c4d2042-23bc-d6a8-42c2-6ff01cb83cf8
lease_duration 	600
lease_renewable	true
ip             	x.x.x.x
key            	-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEpAIBAAKCAQEA5V/Y95qfGaUXRPkKNK9jgDHXPD2n5Ein+QTNnLSGrHtJUH7+
pgs/5Hc4//124P9qHNmjIYQVyvcLreFgSrQCq4K8193hmypBYtsvCgvpc+jEwaGA
zK0QV7uc1z8KL7FuRAxpHJwB6+nubOzzqM03xsViHRhaWhYVHw2Vl4oputSHE7R9
ugaTRg67wge4Nyi5RRL0RQcmW15/Vop8B6HpBSmZQy3enjg+32KbOWCMMTAPuF9/
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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
key_type       	dynamic
port           	22
username       	username

Establish an SSH session

Save the key to a file (e.g. dyn_key.pem) and then use it to establish an SSH session.

$ ssh -i dyn_key.pem username@<IP of remote host>
username@<IP of remote host>:~$

Automate it!

Creation of new key, saving to a file, and using it to establish an SSH session can all be done with a single Vault CLI command.

$ vault ssh -role dynamic_key_role username@<IP of remote host>
username@<IP of remote host>:~$

API

The SSH secret backend has a full HTTP API. Please see the SSH secret backend API for more details.