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author | Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> | 2007-03-08 23:58:28 +0000 |
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committer | Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> | 2007-03-08 23:58:28 +0000 |
commit | af5baf462cf17cd53c7df44e6d63d95db2dcb266 (patch) | |
tree | bb2c6678ac75de0c9f8c49e1c401d0bbfb22573e /doc/notes | |
parent | 7d50b9887901466994b9fe3af4d79624959217ff (diff) |
Renamed to docs for consistency with other packages.
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/notes')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/notes | 223 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 223 deletions
diff --git a/doc/notes b/doc/notes deleted file mode 100644 index eaa6e5b..0000000 --- a/doc/notes +++ /dev/null @@ -1,223 +0,0 @@ - Wallet Implementation Notes - -Introduction - - Collected here are implementation notes about design decisions, - external interfaces, integration, internal structure, and related - issues. This document will mostly be of interest to people who want - to modify the wallet code or who are curious about its design. This - is not user documentation or protocol specifications; see elsewhere - for that. - -Server Issues - - Interface - - We need two interfaces for retrieving items, one which retrieves the - current stored item and one which generates a new item. This - particularly applies to keytabs. We also don't want new keytabs to be - generated for certain keys even by accident without an explicit action - taken, but for most keytabs we want to generate new keys each time. - So we need an interface like: - - get keytab - - Generates a new keytab normally, but retrieves the existing keytab - if we've marked the key as unchanging. - - flag unchanging - flag -unchanging - - Change the state to generate new keytabs each time or always try to - pull the existing key. This operation should probably be - privileged. - - So if you want to generate a new key for a keytab that would otherwise - be persistant, mark it changing, download the new key, and then mark - it unchanging again. - - Possibly need to do something about occasionally changing keys of - keytabs that are otherwise marked unchanging, or we're going to open - ourselves to brute force attacks. - - ACL Management - - Supported operations are: get, store, create (triggered by a get or - store of something that didn't already exist), delete, show, and - setting or clearing flags. Each of these need a separate ACL - potentially. Not sure if we're going to need separate ACLs for each - flag operation. - - Administrators get implicit access to do anything. There does need to - be an ACL on create, but that should probably be implemented per - backend class (keytabs and certs will use NetDB roles, files will use - some namespace limitation based on a separate table, etc.). There may - also need to be a class-specific fallback when no ACL is set to deal - with, for instance, ACL management via NetDB roles for systems that - have no more specific ACL. - - Owner rights provides get, store, and show, but not delete or setting - or clearing flags (not delete because it's too destructive and we - don't want it done accidentally). This can be overridden by more - precise ACL settings. So the ACL logic would go like this: - - * If the user is an administrator, operation is permitted. - - * Otherwise, check the object. If it exists and has a setting for - that specific ACL, apply that ACL. - - * If the object exists but with no specific ACL setting and the - operation is one of get, store, or show, apply the owner ACL. - - * If there is no listed owner ACL, punt to the backend and see if it - can apply a default ACL. - - * If the object doesn't exist, punt to the backend, which will do its - own ACL check against backend-specific rules. - - I think the owner abstraction is worth it over just setting the ACL - for get, store, and show. - - We also need to provide an interface to manage certain types of ACLs, - in particular the krb5-group ACL scheme, at least in the short term - until we standardize on using LDAP for all of those ACLs. We're - probably going to continue to use krb5-group ACLs for the forseeable - future in at least some cases, since we'll want to be able to do - things when LDAP or AFS is down or we'll want a higher level of - security than either can ensure. - - Flags - - locked -- No operations permitted except show - unchanging -- Pull existing value from file store - - For backends like secure files, all values are unchanging implicitly, - but I don't think we should represent this by setting flags on every - instance of those backends; it's just confusing and doesn't provide - more information. - - Expiration - - The database has a field to store an expiration date for every object. - We can implement expiration methods in the backend to automatically - delete some objects (or perhaps lock them) when they pass their - expiration date, but a more useful method might be to provide warnings - when objects are about to expire via warning methods for a backend - that take the object name and the expiration date. This would be - great for certificates, for instance. - - Keytab Backend - - As of the deployment of the wallet, we want to stop limiting nearly - all keytabs from being forced to single DES keys. We're probably - still going to have some keys for which only particular enctypes are - permitted, however. This means keeping a side table of allowable - enctypes per keytab name, where if there are no entries in the table - we allow any enctype. We can pass a list of enctypes into kadmin when - doing the principal creation or randomization, separated by spaces and - enclosed in double quotes. - - When creating a new principal with addprinc, pass the -clearpolicy - flag. Otherwise, the principal will be placed in the default policy - and will be subject to password strength checking, and the initial - password used with -randkey will fail. - - Whenever we generate a new keytab, we may need to push the key into - K4. We could make the client send a flag saying whether they want - synchronization with K4, but it's easier to just always do it (except - maybe for some exception cases). The user doesn't have to ask the - client program for the srvtab if they don't want it, and it doesn't - hurt to create the KDC entry. - - This means that we need the gen_srvtab program from the old srvtab - backend on the server end to push the key into K4. That program - already has the capability to take a srvtab containing the DES key and - push it into the K4 database. It could probably stand some cleanup - and simplification for inclusion in the wallet source. I'm probably - going to rename it to k4changekey or something similar in the process. - - Certificate Creation - - We probably want to handle all requested certificates from Comodo - using this interface since we can use its expiration handling to do - warnings and since that way users can re-download the certificate any - time they want. Certificates are actually pairs of certificate and - key, though, and we need to figure out what we're storing. There is - the key, which we want to be able to store but we don't really do - anything with (except ideally it's associated with a certificate), - there's the CSR (which we could reuse for renewals although that - doesn't get people to change their key), and there's the certificate - itself (which is actually public data). Should there be some method - for someone to request that their previous CSR be reused to request a - new Comodo certificate? Maybe more work than needed. - - Cleanup of Old Entries - - We should periodically scan the wallet for host-based entries for hosts - that aren't in NetDB. Rather than removing them immediately, wait - until we haven't seen the host for several consecutive passes and then - purge them. Send notification of the hosts that are being purged (and - maybe of the hosts that will be purged soon if nothing happens). - -Client Issues - - Command-Line Options - - Some of the specific data types are going to need their own flags to - operations like get. As an example, the keytab get operation will - need an optional flag to specify the srvtab file to which to also - write the key, and will need an optional flag specifying the time - delta at which old kvnos should be pruned from the keytab. These - flags need to be globally unique in the wallet client so that we can - use a naive option parser, although at least for starters we'll - probably require that all the options be given after the operation. - - Keytab Handling - - The server is going to hand the client a keytab that contains the - current keys for the given service. Unless the keytab was marked as - unchanging, these entries will have a higher kvno than any keys - already in the keytab on the local system. - - The only interfaces to read keytabs require a file, so the client will - need to save the keytab to a temporary file in order to extract - individual keys. If there is no keytab on the local system in the - path given to the wallet, this is simple; just write the keytab as - returned by the server into the file. - - If the keytab already exists, we want the following behavior: - - * Add the keys from the new keytab. - - * Retain in the keytab keys for the previous kvno, but not for any - older kvno older than the maximum lifetime of Kerberos tickets. So - scan the keytab for keys with an older kvno and a timestamp older - than one day (maybe make it a week just in case) and delete them. - (Possibly make this configurable.) - - * Delete any keys in the keytab matching the current kvno, just to be - sure we don't get any strange issues. - - We want to try to add the new keys first to minimize the outage window - where service tickets handed out by the KDC aren't recognized by the - host. Adding the keys does just append them to the end, but we - probably have to clean out any keys with the same kvno first. That's - a rare case, so I don't think we have to worry about the outage window - there. - - Srvtab Handling - - If a srvtab was requested, we search for the key in the new keytab - that has an enctype of ENCTYPE_DES_CBC_CRC and then write it out to a - srvtab file. The MIT Kerberos library doesn't support writable - srvtabs in the keytab backend, so we roll that ourselves. - - Look at src/lib/krb5/keytab/kt_srvtab.c in the MIT Kerberos source for - the format of a srvtab file (see the end of that file). - - The kvno that we get from K5 may have no bearing on the kvno in K4. - In order to get the K4 kvno, use the new key to obtain a K4 service - ticket for ourselves and then read the kvno off that service ticket. - There are other approaches, but the other approaches all require - changes to the server side as well, whereas this is self-contained in - the client and can be more easily dropped when we drop K4. |