Chapter 2. Encryption and Key Management

Inter-device communication is a serious security concern. Secure methods of communication over a network are becoming increasingly important, as demonstrated by significant vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed, or more advanced attacks such as BEAST and CRIME. However, encryption is only one part of a larger security strategy. The compromise of an endpoint means that an attacker no longer needs to break the encryption used, but is able to view and manipulate messages as they are processed by the system.

This chapter will review features around configuring Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure both internal and external resources, and will call out specific categories of systems that should be given specific attention.

OpenStack components communicate with each other using various protocols and the communication might involve sensitive or confidential data. An attacker might try to eavesdrop on the channel in order to get access to sensitive information. It is therefore important that all the components must communicate with each other using a secured communication protocol.

2.1. Introduction to TLS and SSL

There are situations where there is a security requirement to assure the confidentiality or integrity of network traffic in an OpenStack deployment. You would generally configure this using cryptographic measures, such as the TLS protocol. In a typical deployment, all traffic transmitted over public networks should be security hardened, but security good practice expects that internal traffic must also be secured. It is insufficient to rely on security zone separation for protection. If an attacker gains access to the hypervisor or host resources, compromises an API endpoint, or any other service, they must not be able to easily inject or capture messages, commands, or otherwise affect the management capabilities of the cloud.

You should security harden all zones with TLS, including the management zone services and intra-service communications. TLS provides the mechanisms to ensure authentication, non-repudiation, confidentiality, and integrity of user communications to the OpenStack services, and between the OpenStack services themselves.

Due to the published vulnerabilities in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols, consider using TLS 1.2 or higher in preference to SSL, and that SSL is disabled in all cases, unless you require compatibility with obsolete browsers or libraries.

2.1.1. Public Key Infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a framework on which to provide encryption algorithms, cipher modes, and protocols for securing data and authentication. It consists of a set of systems and processes to ensure traffic can be sent encrypted while validating the identity of the parties. The PKI profile described here is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Public Key Infrastructure (PKIX) profile developed by the PKIX working group. The core components of PKI are:

  • Digital Certificates - Signed public key certificates are data structures that have verifiable data of an entity, its public key along with some other attributes. These certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). As the certificates are signed by a CA that is trusted, once verified, the public key associated with the entity is guaranteed to be associated with the said entity. The most common standard used to define these certificates is the X.509 standard. The X.509 v3 which is the current standard is described in detail in RFC5280, and updated by RFC6818. Certificates are issued by CAs as a mechanism to prove the identity of online entities. The CA digitally signs the certificate by creating a message digest from the certificate and encrypting the digest with its private key.
  • End entity - The user, process, or system that is the subject of a certificate. The end entity sends its certificate request to a Registration Authority (RA) for approval. If approved, the RA forwards the request to a Certification Authority (CA). The Certification Authority verifies the request and if the information is correct, a certificate is generated and signed. This signed certificate is then send to a Certificate Repository.
  • Relying party - The endpoint that receives the digitally signed certificate that is verifiable with reference to the public key listed on the certificate. The relying party should be in a position to verify the certificate up the chain, ensure that it is not present in the CRL and also must be able to verify the expiry date on the certificate.
  • Certification Authority (CA) - CA is a trusted entity, both by the end party and the party that relies upon the certificate for certification policies, management handling, and certificate issuance.
  • Registration Authority (RA) - An optional system to which a CA delegates certain management functions, this includes functions such as, authentication of end entities before they are issued a certificate by a CA.
  • Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL) - A Certificate Revocation List (CRL) is a list of certificate serial numbers that have been revoked. End entities presenting these certificates should not be trusted in a PKI model. Revocation can happen because of several reasons for example, key compromise, CA compromise.
  • CRL issuer - An optional system to which a CA delegates the publication of certificate revocation lists.
  • Certificate Repository - The location where the end entity certificates and certificate revocation lists are stored and queried - sometimes referred to as the certificate bundle.

It is strongly recommend you security harden all services using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), including using TLS for API endpoints. It is impossible for the encryption or signing of transports or messages alone to solve all these problems. In addition, hosts themselves must be hardened and implement policies, namespaces, and other controls to protect their private credentials and keys. However, the challenges of key management and protection do not reduce the necessity of these controls, or lessen their importance.

2.1.2. Certification Authorities

Many organizations have an established Public Key Infrastructure with their own Certification Authority (CA), certificate policies, and management for which they should use to issue certificates for internal OpenStack users or services. Organizations in which the public security zone is Internet facing will additionally need certificates signed by a widely recognized public CA. For cryptographic communications over the management network, it is recommended one not use a public CA. Instead, the recommendation is that most deployments deploy their own internal CA.

Note

Effective use of TLS relies on the deployment being given a domain or subdomain in DNS which can be used by either a wildcard, or series of specific certificates issues by either a public or internal CA. To ensure TLS certificates can be effectively validated, access to platform services would need to be through these DNS records.

It is recommended that the OpenStack cloud architect consider using separate PKI deployments for internal systems and customer facing services. This allows the cloud deployer to maintain control of their PKI infrastructure and makes requesting, signing and deploying certificates for internal systems easier. Advanced configurations might use separate PKI deployments for different security zones. This allows OpenStack operators to maintain cryptographic separation of environments, ensuring that certificates issued to one are not recognized by another.

Certificates used to support TLS on internet facing cloud endpoints (or customer interfaces where the customer is not expected to have installed anything other than standard operating system provided certificate bundles) should be provisioned using Certificate Authorities that are installed in the operating system certificate bundle.

Note

There are management, policy, and technical challenges around creating and signing certificates. This is an area where cloud architects or operators might wish to seek the advice of industry leaders and vendors in addition to the guidance recommended here.

2.1.3. Configuring Encryption using Director

By default, the overcloud uses unencrypted endpoints for its services. This means that the overcloud configuration requires an additional environment file to enable SSL/TLS for its Public API endpoints. The Advanced Overcloud Customization guide describes how to configure your SSL/TLS certificate and include it as a part of your overcloud creation process: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_openstack_platform/16.0/html/advanced_overcloud_customization/sect-enabling_ssltls_on_the_overcloud

2.1.4. TLS libraries

Certain components, services, and applications within the OpenStack ecosystem can be configured to use TLS libraries. The TLS and HTTP services within OpenStack are typically implemented using OpenSSL, which has a module that has been validated for FIPS 140-2. However, consider that each application or service can still introduce weaknesses in how they use the OpenSSL libraries.

2.1.5. Deprecation of TLS 1.0

Important

FedRAMP-authorized systems are required to move away from TLS 1.0. The recommended level is 1.2, and 1.1 is acceptable only if broad compatibility is required. For more information, see https://www.fedramp.gov/assets/resources/documents/CSP_TLS_Requirements.pdf.

For Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 deployments, TLS 1.0 connections are not accepted by HAProxy, which handles TLS connections for TLS enabled APIs. This is implemented by the no-tlsv10 option. For HA deployments with InternalTLS enabled, cross-node traffic on the controller plane is also encrypted. This includes RabbitMQ, MariaDB, and Redis, among others. MariaDB and Redis have deprecated TLS1.0, and the same deprecation for RabbitMQ is expected to be backported from upstream.

2.1.5.1. Checking whether TLS 1.0 is in use

You can use cipherscan to determine whether TLS 1.0 is being presented by your deployment. Cipherscan can be cloned from https://github.com/mozilla/cipherscan. This example output demonstrates results received from horizon:

Note

Run cipherscan from a non-production system, as it might install additional dependencies when you first run it.

$ ./cipherscan https://openstack.lab.local
..............................
Target: openstack.lab.local:443

prio  ciphersuite                  protocols  pfs                 curves
1     ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256  TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
2     ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384  TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
3     DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256    TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
4     DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384    TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
5     ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256      TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
6     ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384      TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
7     ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA         TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
8     ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA         TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
9     DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256        TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
10    DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA           TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
11    DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256        TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
12    DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA           TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
13    ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA       TLSv1.2    ECDH,P-256,256bits  prime256v1
14    EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA         TLSv1.2    DH,1024bits         None
15    AES128-GCM-SHA256            TLSv1.2    None                None
16    AES256-GCM-SHA384            TLSv1.2    None                None
17    AES128-SHA256                TLSv1.2    None                None
18    AES256-SHA256                TLSv1.2    None                None
19    AES128-SHA                   TLSv1.2    None                None
20    AES256-SHA                   TLSv1.2    None                None
21    DES-CBC3-SHA                 TLSv1.2    None                None

Certificate: trusted, 2048 bits, sha256WithRSAEncryption signature
TLS ticket lifetime hint: None
NPN protocols: None
OCSP stapling: not supported
Cipher ordering: server
Curves ordering: server - fallback: no
Server supports secure renegotiation
Server supported compression methods: NONE
TLS Tolerance: yes

Intolerance to:
 SSL 3.254           : absent
 TLS 1.0             : PRESENT
 TLS 1.1             : PRESENT
 TLS 1.2             : absent
 TLS 1.3             : absent
 TLS 1.4             : absent

When scanning a server, Cipherscan advertises support for a specific TLS version, which is the highest TLS version it is willing to negotiate. If the target server correctly follows TLS protocol, it will respond with the highest version that is mutually supported, which may be lower than what Cipherscan initially advertised. If the server does proceed to establish a connection with the client using that specific version, it is not considered to be intolerant to that protocol version. If it does not establish the connection (with the specified version, or any lower version), then intolerance for that version of protocol is considered to be present. For example:

Intolerance to:
 SSL 3.254           : absent
 TLS 1.0             : PRESENT
 TLS 1.1             : PRESENT
 TLS 1.2             : absent
 TLS 1.3             : absent
 TLS 1.4             : absent

In this output, intolerance of TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 is reported as PRESENT, meaning that the connection could not be established, and that Cipherscan was unable to connect while advertising support for those TLS versions. As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that those (and any lower) versions of the protocol are not enabled on the scanned server.

2.1.6. Cryptographic algorithms, cipher modes, and protocols

You should consider only using TLS 1.2. Other versions, such as TLS 1.0 and 1.1, are vulnerable to multiple attacks and are expressly forbidden by many government agencies and regulated industries. TLS 1.0 should be disabled in your environment. TLS 1.1 might be used for broad client compatibility, however exercise caution when enabling this protocol. Only enable TLS version 1.1 if there is a mandatory compatibility requirement and if you are aware of the risks involved. All versions of SSL (the predecessor to TLS) must not be used due to multiple public vulnerabilities.

When you are using TLS 1.2 and control both the clients and the server, the cipher suite should be limited to ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384. In circumstances where you do not control both endpoints and are using TLS 1.1 or 1.2 the more general HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!DES:!3DES:!SSLv3:!TLSv1:!CAMELLIA is a reasonable cipher selection.

Note

This guide is not intended as a reference on cryptography, and is not prescriptive about what specific algorithms or cipher modes you should enable or disable in your OpenStack services.

2.2. TLS Proxies and HTTP Services

OpenStack endpoints are HTTP services providing APIs to both end-users on public networks and to other OpenStack services on the management network. You can currently encrypt the external requests using TLS. To configure this in Red Hat OpenStack Platform, you can deploy the API services behind HAproxy, which is able to establish and terminate TLS sessions.

In cases where software termination offers insufficient performance, hardware accelerators might be worth exploring as an alternative option. This approach would require additional configuration on the platform, and not all hardware load balancers might be compatible with Red Hat OpenStack Platform. It is important to be mindful of the size of requests that will be processed by any chosen TLS proxy.

2.2.1. Perfect Forward Secrecy

Configuring TLS servers for perfect forward secrecy requires careful planning around key size, session IDs, and session tickets. In addition, for multi-server deployments, shared state is also an important consideration. Real-world deployments might consider enabling this feature for improved performance. This can be done in a security hardened way, but would require special consideration around key management. Such configurations are beyond the scope of this guide.

2.3. Use Barbican to manage secrets

OpenStack Key Manager (barbican) is the secrets manager for Red Hat OpenStack Platform. You can use the barbican API and command line to centrally manage the certificates, keys, and passwords used by OpenStack services. Barbican currently supports the following use cases:

  • Symmetric encryption keys - used for Block Storage (cinder) volume encryption, ephemeral disk encryption, and Object Storage (swift) object encryption.
  • Asymmetric keys and certificates - glance image signing and verification, Octavia TLS load balancing.

In this release, barbican offers integration with the cinder, swift, Octavia, and Compute (nova) components. For example, you can use barbican for the following use cases:

  • Support for Encrypted Volumes - You can use barbican to manage your cinder encryption keys. This configuration uses LUKS to encrypt the disks attached to your instances, including boot disks. The key management aspect is performed transparently to the user.
  • Glance Image Signing - You can configure the Image Service (glance) to verify that an uploaded image has not been tampered with. The image is first signed with a key that is stored in barbican, with the image then being validated before each use.

For more information, see the Barbican guide: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_openstack_platform/16.0/html-single/manage_secrets_with_openstack_key_manager/