openstack team mailing list archive

[Sam Morrison <sorrison@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ken,

Yeah OK I agree it doesn't make it that much more complex as long as the dependancy is packaged in the distos which it is.

I'm still a little confused though.

If nova needs a clear text password to be able to talk to the DB for example then it's going to be needing to access this keyring somehow without human interaction to obtain the password. 
How does it do this? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here.

Cheers,
Sam





 
On 13/12/2012, at 10:16 AM, Ken Thomas <krt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The short answer is that it gives you extra security... if you wish to use it.
> 
> If you're fine with relying on the file permission of nova.conf, glance.conf, etc. to keep any baddies from seeing the clear text passwords in there, then you're right, it doesn't give you anything.
> 
> If, on the other hand, you have a large security group that nearly faints when they see clear text passwords, no matter what the file permission are, this allows you to move your password into an encrypted store of your choosing.  Just specify a secure_source that implements KeyringBackend and you can be as secure as you wish.
> 
> The main point is that you don't have to use it and the default behavior (don't specify a 'secure_source') will be that things behave exactly as before.  The only real extra complexity is that we'd add an additional package (keyring) to the dependency list.
> 
> As I mentioned originally, there's already some optional keyring usage in keystone client. It seems like we could have *less* complexity if it were a hard dependency instead of having the code check if the import worked or not.
> 
> Ken
> 
> On 12/12/2012 2:46 PM, Sam Morrison wrote:
>> My question is what does this extra dependancy give us apart from extra complexity?
>> 
>> I can't see any enhancement in security with this method?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Sam
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 13/12/2012, at 4:44 AM, Ken Thomas <krt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>>> Greetings all!
>>> 
>>> I'm look into using keyring as a way to (optionally) remove clear text passwords from the various config files. (See https://blueprints.launchpad.net/oslo/+spec/pw-keyrings for details.)
>>> 
>>> One of the comments I got back is that I should have the oslo build dependency on keyring be optional until a consensus is reached that it's okay to add it.  I see that keystoneclient is already doing an "import keyring" and catching the exception if it's not there. I can certainly do something similar, but it seems like it would simplify things if we did just have keyring as a regular hard dependency. You don't have to use it, but it's there if you want it.
>>> 
>>> So, is this the proper forum to bring this up?
>>> 
>>> And if so, can we start the ball rolling to get a decision on getting that dependency approved?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Ken
>>> 
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