[openstack-dev] [Neutron][LBaaS] Securing RPC channel between the server and the agent

Russell Bryant rbryant at redhat.com
Mon Jan 27 14:57:57 UTC 2014


On 01/27/2014 09:37 AM, Eugene Nikanorov wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> As we are going to add ssl implementation to lbaas which would be based
> on well-known haproxy+stunnel combination, there is one problem that we
> need to solve: securing communication channel between neutron-server and
> the agent.
> 
> I see several approaches here:
> 1) Rely on secure messaging as described here:
> http://docs.openstack.org/security-guide/content/ch038_transport-security.html
> 
> pros: no or minor additional things to care of on neutron-server side
> and client side
> cons: might be more complex to test. Also I'm not sure testing
> infrastructure uses that.
> We'll need to state that lbaas ssl is only secure when transpost
> security is enabled.
> 
> 2) Provide neutron server/agent with certificate for encrypting
> keys/certificates that are dedicated to loadbalancers.
> 
> pros: doesn't depend on cloud-wide messaging security. We can say that
> 'ssl works' in any case.
> cons: more to implement, more complex deployment.
> 
> Unless I've missed some other obvious solution what do you think is the
> best approach here?
> (I'm not considering the usage of external secure store like barbican at
> this point)
> 
> What do you think?

Using existing available transport security is a good start (SSL to your
amqp broker).

For a step beyond that, we really need to look at a solution that
applies across all of OpenStack, as this is a very general problem that
needs to be solved across many components.

There was a proposal a while back:

    https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/MessageSecurity

This has since been moving forward.  Utilizing it has been blocked on
getting KDS in Keystone.  IIRC, KDS should be implemented in Icehouse,
so we can start utilizing it in other services in the Juno cycle.

-- 
Russell Bryant



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