OSSN/OSSN-0066

MongoDB guest instance allows any user to connect

Summary

When creating a new MongoDB single instance or cluster the default setting in MongoDB `security.authorization` was set as disabled. This resulted in no need to provide user credentials to connect to the mongo instance and perform read / write operations from any network that is attached on instance create.

Affected Services / Software

Trove, Liberty

Discussion

MongoDB contains a security config set within `mongo.conf` as follows:

   security:
       authorization: "enabled"

When creating a new MongoDB instance, or cluster within Trove the `security` value was not populated resulting in MongoDB adopting the default value of `disabled`. With security authorization disabled there would be no enforcement of user authentification, allowing users to connect and perform read/write data operations from any network that is attached on instance create.

A fix was implemented within Mitaka and back ported to Liberty that addresses the problem by enabling authorization by default on single instances. This can be toggled via configuration groups.

Cluster security is determined by the Trove config variable `mongodb.cluster_secure`. This cannot be toggled once the cluster is created.

Recommended Actions

Single instances are now use role based access control (RBAC) by default. To disable RBAC, the Trove user can attach a security group with `security.authorization` set to `disabled`. It can be re-enabled by detaching the security group or changing the value to `enabled`.

The Trove config variable `mongodb.cluster_secure` (boolean type, in `trove.conf`) determines the RBAC state of MongoDB clusters that are created. Setting this to true enables RBAC while false disables it. This applies to all MongoDB clusters, and requires a restart of the trove-api service to change, and cannot be toggled on running clusters.

Contacts / References

Author: Luke Hinds, Red Hat

This OSSN : https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OSSN/OSSN-0066

Original LaunchPad Bug : https://bugs.launchpad.net/trove/+bug/1507841

Mailing List : [Security] tag on openstack-dev@lists.openstack.org

OpenStack Security Group : https://launchpad.net/~openstack-ossg