stackabletech / stackabletech/opa-operator

Enable client authentication and authorization

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Dominant language
Rust
Stars
21
Forks
5
Avg merge
12h 44m
Merged PRs (30d)
11

Description

Description

As a user of OpenPolicyAgent (OPA) I want to be sure that only authenticated & authorized clients can get data (which might include PII data from UserInfoFetcher and other sources).

OPA supports Bearer tokens and Client TLS certificates. The latter fits better into our platform so it's the preferred way but the bearer token can be used as well if there are any hurdles towards implementing client certificates.

Value

We want the SDP platform to be as secure as possible by default and design and in addition this will be a requirement of the Cyber Resilience Act we'll have to fulfill.

Therefore, we need to authenticate and authorize any client requests coming to OPA.

Dependencies

This requires the Secret Operator (I assume) to provide the necessary client certificates for all clients (i.e. authorizers) to be able to authenticate against OPA.

Tasks

- [ ] Change OPA Operator to set the required settings for authentication
- [ ] Create default authorization rule in OPA
- [ ] Change authorizers to use client certificates to authenticate themselves against OPA
- [ ] Change operators to provision the necessary client certificates
- [ ] Update demos and integration tests to use this functionality
- [ ] Document that authentication is now used for OPA

Acceptance Criteria

  • OPA does not accept unauthenticated requests anymore
  • All authorizers authenticate themselves when speaking to OPA

(Information Security) Risk Assessment

This will strictly make our product more secure and helps us with regulations such as the Cyber Resilience Act.
Additional risks are the need to create TLS certificates and protect them but that is already part of the platform.

Release Notes

All authorizers speaking to OpenPolicyAgent (OPA) now use Client TLS certificates to authenticate themselves against OPA.

Remarks

Be aware of this section in the docs:

Note that TLS authentication does not disable non-HTTPS listeners. To ensure that all your communication is secured, it should be paired with an authorization policy (see below) that at least requires the client identity (input.identity) to be set.

In general please read the docs on this feature before starting any implementation.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

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 with the linked OPA security documentation, then inspect the OPA Operator, authorizers, operators, demos, and integration tests named in the task list. Done means unauthenticated requests are rejected, authorizers use client certificates, and the documented demos and tests cover the new authentication flow.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
kubernetes, rust
Domain
authentication, authorization, infrastructure, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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