Open Stack

I take issue with choice of words, in your note. The key here is around
this statement:

Essentially, this means that any token for a particular user can indirectly
> be used to perform any action that user is allowed to perform.


As we are talking about actions the "user is allowed to perform", then we
are *not* talking about "privilege escalation". The current behavior is
*not* a malfunction that needs fixing.

Leaving aside the slightly alarming use of words, what you seem to be
proposing is a *new* behavior in Keystone. It sounds like you are proposing
a means of creating a scoped token that *cannot* be used to request another
token with a different scope.

The use case that comes to mind is limited trust. You want to pass a token
to another service, but you want to limit that service to *less* than the
full range of permissions for the user.

If the use case is limited trust, then changing the project scope is only
one aspect. You might also want to subtract other permissions held by the
user.

The more general case here is the ability to enumerate and enable (if
allowed) or disable capabilities. (Windows has some rather elaborate APIs
around this, that I have not visited in several years.)

Sounds like you want to *enhance* security via introducing control over
capabilities.


I have not spent a lot of time with Keystone, some perhaps I missed
something. I do not see anything along that line mentioned. Is there
interest in introducing control over capabilities in Keystone tokens?











On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 8:18 AM, Nathan Kinder <nkinder at redhat.com> wrote:

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> Keystone token scoping provides no security benefit
> - ---
>
> ### Summary ###
> Keystone provides "scoped" tokens that are constrained to use by a
> single project. A user may expect that their scoped token can only be
> used to perform operations for the project it is scoped to, which is not
> the case. A service or other party who obtains the scoped token can use
> it to obtain a token for a different authorized scope, which may be
> considered a privilege escalation.
>
> ### Affected Services / Software ###
> Keystone, Diablo, Essex, Folsom, Grizzly, Havana, Icehouse, Juno, Kilo
>
> ### Discussion ###
> This is not a bug in keystone, it's a design feature that some users may
> expect to bring security enhancement when it does not. The OSSG is
> issuing this security note to highlight the issue.
>
> Many operations in OpenStack will take a token from the user and pass it
> to another service to perform some portion of the intended operation.
> This token is very powerful and can be used to perform many actions for
> the user. Scoped tokens appear to limit their use to the project and
> roles they were granted for but can also be used to request tokens with
> other scopes. It's important to note that this only works with currently
> valid tokens. Once a token expires it cannot be used to gain a new
> token.
>
> Token scoping helps avoid accidental leakage of tokens because using
> tokens with other services requires the extra step of requesting a new
> re-scoped token from keystone. Scoping can help with audit trails and
> promote good code practices. There's currently no way to create a
> tightly scoped token that cannot be used to request a re-scoped token. A
> scoped token cannot be relied upon to restrict actions to only that
> scope.
>
> ### Recommended Action ###
> Users and deployers of OpenStack must not rely on the scope of tokens
> to limit what actions can be performed using them.
>
> Concerned users are encouraged to read (OSSG member) Nathan Kinder's
> blog post on this issue and some of the potential future solutions.
>
> ### Contacts / References ###
> Nathan Kinder on Token Scoping : https://blog-nkinder.rhcloud.com/?p=101
> This OSSN : https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OSSN/OSSN-0042
> Original LaunchPad Bug : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ossn/+bug/1341816
> OpenStack Security ML : openstack-security at lists.openstack.org
> OpenStack Security Group : https://launchpad.net/~openstack-ossg
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