oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/omicron

OMDB should participate in authz

Open
#6,600 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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authn development Good for new hires
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
572
Forks
97
Avg merge
2d 12h
Merged PRs (30d)
96

Description

Currently, OMDB uses the test user's authz actor, which does not have authorization to view a number of objects, such as instances that don't belong to it. This means that many OMDB commands currently run unauthenticated queries, either requiring OMDB commands to reimplement queries that exist in nexus-db-queries, or requiring nexus-db-queries to provide both authenticated and unauthenticated versions of its queries...which creates an opportunity to accidentally misuse the unauthenticated queries elsewhere.

Instead of having OMDB do an end-run around the entire authn/authz system in these cases, it would be much better to give it its own user that has the required access on all silos.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing how OMDB commands obtain their authz actor and how the shared nexus-db-queries handle authenticated versus unauthenticated queries. The issue names no files or tests, so first identify those entry points and the required silo-wide permissions. Done means OMDB uses its own authorized user without reimplementing queries or exposing unsafe unauthenticated query variants.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
authorization, backend-api-design
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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