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A guide for configuring Vault's SSH-CA
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Vault-ssh-ca-README.md

SSH CA use-case with Vault

In this scenario we are going to set up Vault to sign SSH keys using an internal CA. We will configure the SSH secrets engine and create a CA within Vault. We will then configure an SSH server to trust the CA key we just created. Finally we will attempt to SSH using a private key, and a public key signed by Vault SSH CA.

Prerequisites

  • This guide assumes you have already provisioned a Vault server, SSH host using OpenSSH server, and a SSH client machine.
  • The client system must be able to reach the Vault server and the OpenSSH server.
  • We will refer to these systems respectively as:
    • VAULT_SERVER
    • SSH_SERVER
    • CLIENT

VAULT-01 - Vault Server Setup:

export VAULT_ADDR="http://vault_server:8200"
export VAULT_TOKEN="root_or_admin_token"
vault status
vault token status

VAULT-02 - SSH-CA setup:

VAULT-02A Enable and configure the SSH CA secrets engine:

  • Enable the SSH secrets engine and mount it in an arbitrary path. This path will be used to sign Client SSH keys.
  • Generate new keys in that path. You can also import keys from your existing PKI, or a Vault PKI engine.
  • Create the trusted user CA Keys and update SSH server.
vault secrets enable -path=ssh-client-signer ssh
vault write ssh-client-signer/config/ca generate_signing_key=true
vault read -field=public_key ssh-client-signer/config/ca > trusted-user-ca-keys.pem

VAULT-02B Define users and policies for Vault:

  • Add role to Vault: Allow client to access paths at Vault server endpoint.
    • This says that whichever entity has this policy attached to it will be able to 'create' and 'update' to the API path /ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole, which is the path used to sign a key with the SSH CA options clientrole
vi user-policy.hcl
vault policy write user user-policy.hcl
  • Also 2 new users using user and password authentication method. The actual authentication can be sourced from an existing identity source such as LDAP, Git etc.
vault auth enable userpass
vault write auth/userpass/users/ubuntu password=test policies=user
vault write auth/userpass/users/ec2-user password=test policies=user
vault write auth/userpass/users/$(whoami) password=test policies=user

VAULT-02C Configure client role configuration:

  • Add role to Vault: Allow client to sign their public key using vault. Adjust TTL, allowed users here if needed.
vi signer-clientrole.json
  • allow_user_certificates declares that this role will be for signing user certificates, instead of host certificates
  • allowed_users: allows this role to sign for any users. If, for example, you wanted to create a role which allowed only keys for a particular service name (say you wanted only to sign keys for an ansible user if you were using Ansible)
  • default_extensions sets the default certificate options when it signs the key. In this case, permit-pty allows the key to get a PTY on login, permitting interactive terminal sessions. For more information, consult the ssh-keygen documentation
  • key_type specifies that this is for SSH CA signing
  • ttl specifies that the signed certificate will be valid for no more than 30 minutes.
  • Issue the command below to add this role:
vault write ssh-client-signer/roles/clientrole @signer-clientrole.json

SSH-01 - OpenSSH Server Setup

SSH-01A - Add TrustedUserCAKeys directive:

  • SFTP the trusted-user-ca-keys.pem from step VAULT-02A
  • Then add the TrustedUserCAKeys directive to ssh_config file
sudo cp trusted-user-ca-keys.pem /etc/ssh/
echo "TrustedUserCAKeys /etc/ssh/trusted-user-ca-keys.pem" | sudo tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sudo service sshd restart

CLIENT-01 - OpenSSH Client Setup

CLIENT-01A - Create key pair and sign with Vault:

  • Create key pair. Note that ssh_user must exist in in SSH host:
export SSH_USER="ubuntu"
export SSH_SERVER="ssh_server_dns"
export VAULT_ADDR="http://vault_server:8200"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -N "" -C "${SSH_USER}" -f .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}
export public_key=$(cat .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.pub)
echo ${public_key}
  • Login to Vault and export Vault token:
curl \
    --request POST \
    --data '{"password": "test"}' \
    ${VAULT_ADDR}/v1/auth/userpass/login/${SSH_USER}

export VAULT_TOKEN=<auth.client_token>
  • Get the public key signed by Vault:
cat <<EOF > ssh-ca.json
{
    "public_key": "${public_key}",
    "valid_principals": "${SSH_USER}"
}
EOF
cat ssh-ca.json

# If jq is installed:
curl -s \
  --header "X-Vault-Token: ${VAULT_TOKEN}" \
  --request POST \
  --data @ssh-ca.json \
  $VAULT_ADDR/v1/ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole | jq -r .data.signed_key > .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub

# Otherwise:
curl -s \
  --header "X-Vault-Token: ${VAULT_TOKEN}" \
  --request POST \
  --data @ssh-ca.json \
  $VAULT_ADDR/v1/ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole > vault_response.txt
  cat vault_response.txt
  # Copy the .data.signed_key field:
  vi .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub

CLIENT-01B - perform SSH Login:

  • Try to only sign-in with unsigned key, you should get the output Permission denied (publickey). error:
ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER} ${SSH_USER}@${SSH_SERVER}
  • Sign-in with signed public key and private key and validate you can login:
ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER} ${SSH_USER}@${SSH_SERVER}

VAULT-03 Configure client role with short TTL:

Previously we configured clientrole with 30m TTL. Lets make this 1m to enforce a shorter TTL:

vi signer-clientrole2.json
vault write ssh-client-signer/roles/clientrole @signer-clientrole.json

CLIENT-02 Configure client role with short TTL:

  • Remove previous key pair:
rm -f .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}*
  • Repeat steps in CLIENT-01A
  • Perform SSH Login:
ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER} ${SSH_USER}@${SSH_SERVER}
exit
  • Wait one minute and re-try. You should get a permission denied error.
sleep 60
ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER} ${SSH_USER}@${SSH_SERVER}

CLIENT-03 - Example bash function:

  • Assuming the jq utility is installed, we can create a function for ease of use:
ssh_vault () {
  export SSH_USER="$(whoami)"
  export SSH_SERVER="<ssh_host>"
  export VAULT_ADDR="http://<vault_dns>:8200"
  rm -f token ssh-ca.json .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}*
  ssh-keygen -t rsa -N "" -C "${SSH_USER}" -f .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}
  export public_key=$(cat .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.pub)
  curl -s \
      --request POST \
      --data '{"password": "test"}' \
      ${VAULT_ADDR}/v1/auth/userpass/login/${SSH_USER} | jq -r .auth.client_token > token
  export VAULT_TOKEN=$(cat token)
  curl -s \
    --header "X-Vault-Token: ${VAULT_TOKEN}" \
    --request POST \
    --data "{\"public_key\":\"${public_key}\",\"valid_principals\":\"${SSH_USER}\"}" \
    $VAULT_ADDR/v1/ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole | jq -r .data.signed_key > .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub
  chmod 400 .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}*
  ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER}.signed.pub -i .ssh/id_rsa_${SSH_USER} ${SSH_USER}@${SSH_SERVER}
}

Appendix:

  • signer-clientrole.json file:
{
  "allow_user_certificates": true,
  "allowed_users": "*",
  "default_extensions": [
    {
      "permit-pty": ""
    }
  ],
  "key_type": "ca",
  "default_user": "ubuntu",
  "ttl": "30m0s"
}
  • user-policy.hcl file:
path "sys/mounts" {
  capabilities = ["list", "read"]
}

path "ssh-client-signer/sign/clientrole" {
  capabilities = ["create", "update"]
}

path "ssh-client-signer/config/ca" {
  capabilities = ["read"]
}

path "ssh-host-signer/config/ca" {
  capabilities = ["read"]
}
  • signer-clientrole2.json file:
{
  "allow_user_certificates": true,
  "allowed_users": "*",
  "default_extensions": [
    {
      "permit-pty": ""
    }
  ],
  "key_type": "ca",
  "default_user": "ubuntu",
  "ttl": "1m0s"
}
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