kgilpin

20 ms·

181.
by kgilpin 11y ago
Using an instance id or MAC address as a secret 2nd factor seems surprising to me. This is what banks are asking for? It's nice that there are two factors to the authentication, but neither one seems to be securely random.
182.
by kgilpin 11y ago
It's pretty amazing to see how many new secrets tools for DevOps and cloud have suddenly materialized in the last few weeks. At Conjur, we have been in production in this space for almost two years. If you're wondering how to stac
183.
by kgilpin 12y ago
If secrets are rotated or time-limited, they become a lot better. For an example, see the AWS notion of Token Vending Machine. It's much easier to feel comfortable handing out secrets of each of them had a fixed lifespan. It reduces an
184.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Most people we have worked with don't take ssh key passwords seriously, because they can be stripped out. We advocated for the idea that password-protected ssh keys are a form of 2-factor auth, but nobody bought into that. Organization
185.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Disclaimer: infrastructure secrets management is my profession. This is a lot harder problem than people realize. If you have a fixed set of machines that need secrets, then encrypting a bag of secrets with each machine's private key w
186.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Something else worth mentioning; SSH has built-in support for single-sign-on, via SSH agent forwarding. As long as my public key is available anywhere (and that's exactly what it's designed for), then I can be authenticated by any
187.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Yes, thanks for this observation. Although inevitably, some "pets" remain...
188.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Regarding the API key, from an operational perspective it's an improvement. The reason is it creates a separation of duties between management of the API key (responsibility of opsec), and the application credentials (responsibility of
189.
by kgilpin 12y ago
How do you manage the decryption key?
190.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Yes you're right. Operations teams then find that they have to lock down their Chef / Puppet master much more tightly than before. In so doing, they make these systems harder for developers to work with, and they introduce additio
191.
by kgilpin 12y ago
Installing secrets on disk exposes them to potential leakage through backups. This is a major issue, since much less attention is typically paid to access management for backups than to production servers. Therefore I support the approach o
192.
by kgilpin 12y ago
12 factor and .env make a lot of sense. However they still leave some questions unanswered, such as: How do the secrets get safely distributed to the machines where they are needed? How to revoke/rotate a secret, especially once a comp
193.
by kgilpin 12y ago
I would definitely love to hear what you think of our stuff. Here's a link; I have chosen a description of how secrets can be stored, distributed over HTTPS, and wrapped with a script that exposes them as environment variables. http:&
194.
by kgilpin 12y ago
The IPA in FreeIPA stands for "Identity, Policy, and Audit". Yet on the Roadmap page ( http://www.freeipa.org/page/Roadmap ), enjoy this statement: "The audit component of the project will remain deferred
195.
by kgilpin 12y ago
For example, at the US Air Force, the following policies are in place: * Use of SSH is discouraged, because the traffic is encrypted, and the Air Force wants to be able to read all the traffic in and out of boxes. * If you do get a waiver f
196.
by kgilpin 12y ago
If ops can't keep critical systems secured, then it doesn't matter what approach you take.
197.
by kgilpin 12y ago
People lose and misplace AWS credentials all the time. To wit: http://www.techspot.com/news/56127-10000-aws-secret-access-k... So getting somebody's AWS credential is a lot easier than it sounds. The obstacles you
198.
by kgilpin 12y ago
How do you authorize the right to tag instances? It seems risky to automatically map an instance into DNS based on a tag, unless you have strict access control over who can tag what. To expand, suppose the "app" tag adds an app se
199.
by kgilpin 12y ago
It seems like there is a high level of trust between micro-services, but it's not clear what is the basis of this trust. For example, is any service allowed full permissions on any other service? Is there authentication and authorizati