184 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
184 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
---
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layout: docs
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page_title: Vault Enterprise Sentinel Integration
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description: An overview of how Sentinel interacts with Vault Enterprise.
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---
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# Vault Enterprise and Sentinel integration
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@include 'alerts/enterprise-and-hcp.mdx'
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Vault Enterprise integrates HashiCorp Sentinel to provide a rich set of access
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control functionality. Because Vault is a security-focused product trusted with
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high-risk secrets and assets, and because of its default-deny stance,
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integration with Vault is implemented in a defense-in-depth fashion. This takes
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the form of multiple types of policies and a fixed evaluation order.
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## Policy types
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Vault's policy system has been expanded to support three types of policies:
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- `ACLs` - These are the [traditional Vault
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policies](/vault/docs/concepts/policies) and remain unchanged.
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- `Role Governing Policies (RGPs)` - RGPs are Sentinel policies that are tied
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to particular tokens, Identity entities, or Identity groups. They have access
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to a rich set of controls across various aspects of Vault.
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- `Endpoint Governing Policies (EGPs)` - EGPs are Sentinel policies that are
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tied to particular paths instead of tokens. They have access to as much
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request information as possible, but they can take effect even on
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unauthenticated paths, such as login paths.
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Not every unauthenticated path supports EGPs. For instance, the paths related
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to root token generation cannot support EGPs because it's already the mechanism
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of last resort if, for instance, all clients are locked out of Vault due to
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misconfigured EGPs.
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Like with ACLs, [root tokens](/vault/docs/concepts/tokens#root-tokens)
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are not subject to Sentinel policy checks.
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Sentinel execution should be considered to be significantly slower than normal
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ACL policy checking. If high performance is needed, testing should be performed
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appropriately when introducing Sentinel policies.
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### Policy enforcement levels
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Sentinel policies have three enforcement levels to choose from.
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| Level | Description |
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| -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| advisory | The policy is allowed to fail. Can be used as a tool to educate new users. |
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| soft-mandatory | The policy must pass unless an override is specified. |
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| hard-mandatory | The policy must pass. |
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## Policy evaluation
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Vault evaluates incoming requests against policies of all types that are
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applicable.
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![Policy evaluation](/img/diagram-policy-evaluation-workflow_light.png#light-theme-only)
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![Policy evaluation](/img/diagram-policy-evaluation-workflow_dark.png#dark-theme-only)
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1. If the request is unauthenticated, skip to evaluating the EGPs. Otherwise,
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evaluate the token's ACL policies. These must grant access; as always, a
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failure to be granted capabilities on a path via ACL policies denies the
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request.
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2. Evaluate RGPs attached to the client token. All policies must pass according
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to their enforcement level.
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3. Evaluate EGPs set on the requested path, and any prefix-matching EGPs set on
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less-specific paths, are evaluated. All policies must pass according to their
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enforcement level.
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Any failure at any of these steps results in a denied request.
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### RGPs and namespaces
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Policies, auth methods, secrets engines, and tokens are locked into the
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[namespace](/vault/docs/enterprise/namespaces) they are created in. However,
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identity groups can pull in entities and groups from other namespaces.
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<Tip>
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Refer to the [Set up entities and groups section of the Secure Multi-Tenancy
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with Namespaces
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tutorial](/vault/tutorials/enterprise/namespaces#set-up-entities-and-groups) for
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a step-by-step instruction.
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</Tip>
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Consider the following scenario.
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The training namespace is a child namespace of the education namespace. The "Sun
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Shine" entity created in the education namespace is a member of the "Tester"
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group which is defined in the training namespace. The group members inherit the
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group-level policy.
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![Relationship](/img/diagram-rgp-namespace_light.png#light-theme-only)
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![Relationship](/img/diagram-rgp-namespace_dark.png#dark-theme-only)
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While ACL policies and EGPs set rules on a specific path, an RGP does not
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specify a target path. RGPs are tied to tokens, identity entities, or identity
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groups that you can write rules without specifying a path.
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What if the deny-all RGP in the training namespace looked like:
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<CodeBlockConfig filename="deny-all.sentinel">
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```hcl
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precond = rule {
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identity.entity.metadata.org_id is "A012345X"
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}
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main = rule when precond {
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false
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}
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```
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</CodeBlockConfig>
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Vault checks the requesting token's entity metadata. If the `org_id` metadata
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exists and the value is `A012345X`, the request gets denied because the
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enforcement level is hard-mandatory. It does not matter if the request invokes a
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path starts with `/education` or `/education/training`, or even `/foo` because
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there is no path associated with the deny-all RGP.
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## Policy overriding
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Vault supports normal Sentinel overriding behavior. Requests to override can be
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specified on the command line via the `policy-override` flag or in HTTP
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requests by setting the `X-Vault-Policy-Override` header to `true`.
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Override requests are visible in Vault's audit log; in addition, override
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requests and their eventual status (whether they ended up being required) are
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logged as warnings in Vault's server logs.
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## MFA
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Sentinel policies support the [Identity-based MFA
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system](/vault/docs/enterprise/mfa) in Vault Enterprise. Within a single
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request, multiple checks of any named MFA method will only trigger
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authentication behavior for that method once, regardless of whether its
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validity is checked via ACLs, RGPs, or EGPs.
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EGPs can be used to require MFA on otherwise unauthenticated paths, such as
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login paths. On such paths, the request data will perform a lookahead to try to
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discover the appropriate Identity information to use for MFA. It may be
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necessary to pre-populate Identity entries or supply additional parameters with
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the request if you require more information to use MFA than the endpoint is
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able to glean from the original request alone.
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# Using Sentinel
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## Configuration
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Sentinel policies can be configured via the `sys/policies/rgp/` and
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`sys/policies/egp/` endpoints; see [the
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documentation](/vault/api-docs/system/policies) for more information.
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Once set, RGPs can be assigned to Identity entities and groups or to tokens
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just like ACL policies. As a result, they cannot share names with ACL policies.
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When setting an EGP, a list of paths must be provided specifying on which paths
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that EGP should take effect. Endpoints can have multiple distinct EGPs set on
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them; all are evaluated for each request. Paths can use a glob character (`*`)
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as the last character of the path to perform a prefix match; a path that
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consists only of a `*` will apply to the root of the API. Since requests are
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subject to an EGPs exactly matching the requested path and any glob EGPs
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sitting further up the request path, an EGP with a path of `*` will thus take
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effect on all requests.
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## Properties and examples
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See the [Examples](/vault/docs/enterprise/sentinel/examples) page for examples
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of Sentinel in action, and the
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[Properties](/vault/docs/enterprise/sentinel/properties) page for detailed
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property documentation.
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## Tutorial
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Refer to the [Sentinel Policies](/vault/tutorials/policies/sentinel)
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tutorial to learn how to author Sentinel policies in Vault.
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