Security/Juno/Marconi
This page documents security related details for the Marconi project in the OpenStack Juno release.
Contents
Implemented Crypto
None. We would like to implement message signing for the K cycle, though. (TBD)
Used Crypto
Libraries
Marconi's only crypto is in the keystone middleware and in libraries that are used by backend drivers.
Keystone
Marconi uses the standard Keystone WSGI middleware for authentication.
Backends
Marconi currently relies on pymongo and SQLAlchemy to implement storage drivers. pymongo uses Python's standard "ssl" package (source).
During Juno we are also experimenting with Redis, AMQP, and Kafka drivers.
- The AMQP driver will use the Python bindings for qpid-proton, which uses OpenSSL.
- Redis does not natively support TLS. It may be added by a proxy, but we are not planning on adding support for that to the Marconi driver at this time.
- Kafka does not appear to support TLS either.
Encryption Algorithms
Algorithm | Purpose | Configurable | Implementation | Details | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
TLS | Encrypted connection to MongoDB | Yes | pymongo | SSL can be enabled by setting a flag in the mongodb connection string, configured in marconi.conf. We plan to also make the cert options configurable via marconi.conf | https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-python-driver/blob/master/pymongo/pool.py |
TLS | Encrypted connection to an AMQP broker | TBD | qpid-proton | TBD | https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/qpid/proton/trunk/proton-c/src/ssl/ |
Hashing Algorithms
Algorithm | Purpose | Configurable | Implementation | Details | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
CRC32 | Shard queues across multiple MongoDB databases | Number of databases "partitions" is configurable. | binascii.crc32 | Since we expect operators to only use a small number of partitions (2-4), it was thought that CRC32 would provide a reasonably even distribution. An attacker may be able to create many queues, named is such a way that they end up on the same partition. This threat will be examined in j-2. | GitHub Link |
Sensitive Data
Keys/Certificates
API: None
Backend: See below
Passwords
API: The only thing passed to Marconi is a Keystone auth token.
Backend: The MongoDB driver does not support Mongo's authentication features. We are considering adding this support in Juno (bug), but the work will likely slip to the K cycle. There are no plans to support authentication for any other backends at this time.
Potential Improvements
A list of potential improvements we could make, in no particular order:
- Submit a patch to pymongo to take advantage of improvements to the Py3K ssl module
- Move to mmh3 from crc32, or migrate away from partitioning queues across multiple DBs
- Support MongoDB's auth features
- Support TLS proxy for backends that don't have native support
- Implement message signing, possibly also encryption
- If we decide to support AMQP backends, add support for user/password auth