Open Stack

On 12/17/2014 10:16 AM, Preston L. Bannister wrote:
> 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.

You are correct that the current behavior is not a bug.  It is a
behavior that can be misleading though, as one might assume that an
intercepted token can only be used to perform actions that are allowed
by that specific token.  This notes is pointing out that the assumption
that token scope has a security property is incorrect.

> 
> 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.

Yes, this is correct (though these potential enhancements are not the
intent of the security note).

> 
> 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.

Yes, absolutely (though it's best to avoid the word 'trust' since that
has a very specific meaning in Keystone).

Ultimately, being able to request what roles you want a token to contain
would be ideal.  I describe some of this in my blog post that is
referenced in the security note.

For this to be useful, the end-user requesting a token needs to have
some idea of what roles are required to perform a particular action.
This requires policy related enhancements, which have had some
discussion on the development mailing list as well as in the design
sessions at the Summit in Paris.

> 
> 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.)

Yes, these are the policy related enhancements I was mentioning.  Being
able to have API calls to answer the following questions would be useful
for this:

- What roles to I need to perform action 'x'?
- What actions can I perform using token 'x'?

This is similar to things like the 'get effective rights' control in LDAP.

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

That is correct, but the intent of this security note is to raise
awareness of how Keystone token scope works since it can be easily
misunderstood form a security perspective.

> 
> 
> 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?

Absolutely.  Both of the topics mentioned above have been discussed by
the Keystone development team.  There are various pieces that need to
fall into place first, but there are efforts underway to improve things
in this area.

Thanks,
-NGK

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> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 8:18 AM, Nathan Kinder <nkinder at redhat.com
> <mailto:nkinder at redhat.com>> wrote:
> 
> 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
> <mailto:openstack-security at lists.openstack.org>
> OpenStack Security Group : https://launchpad.net/~openstack-ossg
> 
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