Secure Passwords

Overview Copied

This document explains how to use secure passwords on the Gateway, as well as how to decrypt encoded environment variables.

Operation Copied

Types of password offered by the Gateway and how to generate them Copied

There are a number of places where it is possible to specify passwords in your setup. For example, to access external resources or to access secure commands.

The Gateway supports the following methods of specifying passwords:

One way

Encoded passwordsThese are one way hashes used to specify the Netprobe passwords. This is essentially the Unix crypt format.

The Gateway Setup Editor can configure and transmit this password to the Netprobe for you. Alternatively, the start Netprobe script can supply a password by setting the ENCODED_PASSWORD environment variable. This is documented in the template file. To encrypt the password using the Gateway, use:

gateway -pw <password>

Two way

When interfacing with external systems, it is necessary to securely encrypt the password within the setup but also to decrypt them when required to supply the password to an external API such as an interface to a database. The Gateway supplies the following ways of specifying passwords.

gateway -aes256-encrypt <password>
gateway -en <password>

Caution

This option has been deprecated.

External password provider (extPwd)

Specify passwords by requesting them from secured external sources. You can configure the source from Operating environment using the Gateway Setup Editor.

Plain text (plain-text)

Specify a password without any encryption. This is not advised and is only provided for testing purposes.

Caution

This option has been deprecated.

Variable (Var)

Specify a password with a variable. Variables can be defined in managed entities, managed entity groups, types, environments and operating environment. You can provide any of the above password types using a variable. For more information, see User Variables and Environments.

Securing your Gateway with a supplied key Copied

It is recommended that you use the most secure method of storing your passwords possible within your configuration. The Gateway provides AES 256 implementation, this is the recommended method unless you are using an external password manager.

Secure password encryption

Gateway uses a built-in key to encrypt your passwords by default. You can supply your own key to increase the security of your passwords. See below for how to do this.

Warning

If you supply your own key, any existing AES 256 encrypted passwords will no longer be valid.

How to generate your own AES-256 key Copied

An AES 256 key actually has two parts:

Caution

Do not edit the key file while the Gateway is running. The Gateway detects the change and generates an error at whatever reload interval is set. Remember that all passwords in the setup will need to be re-entered if this file is changed.

You can use openssl tool on the command line to generate your own key and initialisation vector:

  1. Use the following command, replacing <encryption phrase> with any phrase or letters you want:
openssl enc -salt -aes-256-cbc -k "<encryption phrase>" -P -md sha1

The command produces output in the following form:

key=92358925C00DE524B4F325A7F488DF1F29646313F6D258090818E8C9B69CF4D8
iv =B8B606E4700FE4D05E24E1A682F5963D

The command produces a different result each time it is run.

  1. Copy these lines into a file or redirect the output of this command into a file.

Note

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org).

How to change the key file of a Gateway Copied

Gateway uses a key file to encrypt all the AES passwords in your setup file. When starting a Gateway for the first time you can either use the built-in key or specify your own key using the -key-file <filename> option.

When a Gateway starts, it generates an MD5 hash of its key (either the specified key file or the built-in key), and stores the hash in Gateway’s cache. The next time the Gateway starts it checks if the cached key hash matches the specified key file, or if you run Gateway again with no specified key file, it checks if the cached key hash matches the Gateway’s built-in key. The Gateway refuses to start if there is a cached key hash and it does not match the current specified key. This checking is done to prevent you from unintentionally starting the Gateway with a different key from the one used previously.

If you want to change the key used by an existing Gateway, you can override the above cache checking by using either the -skip-cache option or the -previous-key-file <filename> option.

Change a Gateway key using -skip-cache Copied

You can start a Gateway using the -skip-cache option, the Gateway will start even if the cached key hash does not match the new key.

Caution

Running Gateway with these commands overwrites the cached key with the new or built-in key. Before you do this, you must make sure that you have already re-encrypted all the AES passwords in your setup file with the new key. Otherwise, old passwords will not be decrypted correctly.

To change the key file of your Gateway, you can start it with both -key-file and -skip-cache options.

gateway2.linux_64 -key-file <key-file> -skip-cache

Alternatively, to change the Gateway key to the built-in key, you can start it with the -skip-cache option only.

gateway2.linux_64 -skip-cache

Change a Gateway key using -previous-key-file Copied

If you have not re-encrypted all the AES passwords in your setup file, then you can use the -previous-key-file <prev-key> option instead. This allows Gateway to use two keys while you transition to a new key. However, this parameter cannot be used when transitioning from the built-in key to a new key.

If a Gateway cannot decrypt an AES password in the setup file using its main key, it will try to decrypt the password again using the specified prev-key. If an AES password required the previous key, the Gateway Setup Editor will generate a warning. If an AES password could not be decrypted, the Gateway Setup Editor will generate an error.

When started with this option, the Gateway will overwrite the cached key hash with the hash of the new main key and also store the hash of the specified previous key file in its cache. To ensure you are using the correct keys, the Gateway will not start if there is a cached key hash and it does not match either key.

The next time you run Gateway again, you must either:

To change the key file of your Gateway, you can start the Gateway with both -key-file and -previous-key-file options. Then you must re-encrypt your passwords with the new key.

gateway2.linux_64 -key-file <new-key-file> -previous-key-file <previous-key-file>

Alternatively, to change the Gateway key to the built-in key, you can start it with the -previous-key-file option only. Then you must re-encrypt your passwords with the built-in key.

gateway2.linux_64 -previous-key-file <previous-key-file>

How to encrypt a password with the new key Copied

Since you can start a Gateway with a different key, you also need a way to encrypt passwords using the new key. You can do this using the Gateway Setup Editor or on the command line.

To encrypt a password with the new key using the command line, use the -aes256-encrypt option replacing <password> with your desired password, and <key-file> with your key file:

gateway -aes256-encrypt <password> -key-file <key-file>

This command outputs the encrypted text of the specified password, which can be added to a Gateway XML setup:

Encoded text:
+encs+69B1E12815FA83702F0016B0E7FBD33B

As an example, consider the command is below:

gateway2.linux -aes256-encrypt PassW0rd -key-file shh.aes

Decode encrypted environment variables Copied

As detailed in Securing your Gateway with a supplied key, the Gateway can be given a key file that is used to encrypt secure password fields.

You are required to supply your own key file if you want to send your own encrypted environment variables to a Toolkit. The Gateway can use it’s own key but we do not supply a means for a third party to decrypt these.

See How to generate your own AES-256 key for how to generate your own key, and How to generate password with the new key for how to use your new key to make passwords.

To decrypt your password you need to convert the hexadecimal back to base64 for use with openssl and provide the contents of your key file.

Below is a bash script demonstrating how to do this.

decode.sh

#!/bin/bash
hex=${1#*+encs+}
salt=$(grep salt key-file)
key=$(grep key key-file)
iv=$(grep iv key-file)
echo ${hex}| xxd -r -p | base64 | openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -S ${salt#*=} -K ${key#*=} -iv ${iv#*=} -a

Note

xxd is part of the vim-common package which you may have to install separately.

To use this script to convert an environment variable, replace the ‘1’ in the second line with the name of the environment variable. All encrypted variables start with +encs+ so this removes the prefix prior to decoding. Example of usage:

./decode.sh +encs+69B1E12815FA83702F0016B0E7FBD33B

Securing your Gateway with an external password provider Copied

You can configure a Gateway to retrieve passwords from an external provider. This allows passwords to be encrypted and stored by another application.

Gateway supports the following external providers:

Note

Only one external provider can be used at a time.

Configure the operating environment Copied

To use an external password provider, you must configure the connection to the provider server in the Gateway Operating environment. The provider must be accessible to the Gateway over the network and you must provide valid credentials to access the password store.

To configure an external provider:

  1. Open the Gateway Setup Editor.
  2. Navigate to Operating environment.
  3. Open the Advanced tab.
  4. Click External passwords, this creates a new section.
  5. Specify the Provider.
  6. Specify the Provider information.
  7. Specify a Validation timeout. This determines how long Gateway should wait after setup validation for responses to outstanding password requests.
  8. Click Validate current document
  9. Click Save current document

CyberArk Central Credential Provider Copied

The CyberArk Central Credential ProviderCentral Credential Provider allows the Gateway to fetch passwords from a central password vault using an API.

Gateway CyberArk

To use the CyberArk Central Credential Provider as your password provider, supply the following information:

Field Description
Server name

URL of the server. This should take the form https://<server_name>:<port>.

If no port is specified the default port 443 will be used.

Mandatory: Yes

Application id

Name used to identify the CyberArk permissions for the Gateway. This determines which passwords can be requested and must be configured in the CyberArk web interface.

Mandatory: Yes

Client certificate

Path to the <your-cyberark-cert>.pem file containing the certificates needed to connect to CyberArk securely.

Mandatory: Yes

Client key

Path to the file containing the client key. This is not required if the client key has been provided as part of the <your-cyberark-cert>.pem file.

Mandatory: No

Client key passphase

Passphrase used to decrypt an encrypted client key.

Mandatory: No

When you request a password, sends an HTTPS request to the containing a query for the required password. The correct queries will be provided by your administrator.

A valid request will receive a JSON file in response. Gateway will parse the JSON file and extract the password. Passwords received by the Gateway are stored securely in memory using AES-256 encryption.

Test connectivity Copied

You can test whether your environment can connect to the CyberArk Central Credential Provider by manually performing a query using curl:

curl -k --cert client.pem 'https://<server>:<port>/AIMWebService/api/Accounts?AppID=<application_id>&Query=<query>

CyberArk Local Credential Provider Copied

The CyberArk Local Credential Provider allows the Gateway and the Netprobe to maintain a secure, actively refreshed password cache locally. This uses a local agent to access your central password vault.

CyberArk Local Credential Provider

To use CyberArk Local Credential Provider as your password provider, supply the following information:

Field Description
Application id

Name used to identify the CyberArk permissions for the Gateway. This determines which passwords can be requested and must be configured in the CyberArk web interface.

Default: ITRS-Geneos

Mandatory: No

SDK path

Path to the application password SDK installed on the Gateway host. The path must be fully specified and cannot embed any references to environment variables.

If no path is specified, the default CyberArk installation directory /opt/CARKaim/sdk/clipasswordsdk will be used.

Mandatory: No

Note

Configuring the CyberArk Local Credential Provider in the operating environment allows only the Gateway to use external passwords. To enable Netprobes to use external passwords, you must both configure the operating environment settings and install the local agent on each Netprobe host, and then configure external passwords on each Netprobe. For more information, see Probes.

In addition, the CyberArk Local Credential Provider is available on all platforms supported by the respective plugins, except Linux on IBM POWER8. For more information, see Plugin Support in Geneos Compatibility Matrix.

HashiCorp Vault Copied

The HashiCorp Vault integration allows the Gateway to fetch passwords from the Vault when it validates its setup. It can use either the AppRole authentication method or TLS certificate authentication to obtain a Vault token.

HashiCorp Vault

To use Vault as your password provider, the information you must provide depends on the authentication mode you select:

Mode Field Description
all Server name

URL of the Vault server. This should take the form https://<server_name>:<port>.

If no port is specified the default port 443 will be used.

Mandatory: Yes

all Server CA certificate

Path to a PEM file containing a certificate (or certificate chain) to be used to verify the identity of the Vault server.

Mandatory: Yes

AppRole Role ID

This is provided by a Vault administrator, and it is used by the Gateway to authenticate to the Vault.

Mandatory: Yes

AppRole Secret ID

This is provided by a Vault administrator, and it is used by the Gateway to authenticate to the Vault . The secret ID should be stored using AES encryption, so that the plaintext value does not appear in the Gateway setup file.

Mandatory: Yes

Certificate Client certificate

Path to a certificate in PEM format which has been configured as a trusted certificate by the Vault administrator.

Mandatory: Yes

Certificate Client key

Path to the file containing the client key. This is not required if the client key has been included in the client certificate PEM file.

Mandatory: No

Certificate Client key passphrase

Passphrase used to decrypt an encrypted client key.

Mandatory: No

Use external passwords Copied

Set up external passwords

To use a password from an external provider:

  1. Select extPwd from the Password drop-down list.
  2. Specify the query associated with the required password. For more information about each supported password provider, see External passwords query syntax.
  3. Click Validate current document
  4. Click Save current document

External password query syntax Copied

password items Copied

The query string for a CyberArk item is a sequence of key-value pairs. For example:

If the query provided by your CyberArk administrator starts with Query= prefix, it should be omitted.

HashiCorp Vault password items Copied

The query string for a Vault item is similar to a URL path. Since the secret item stored at a Vault API path can contain multiple key-value pairs, the required key can be specified by appending # and the key name to the Vault API path. This is not required if the key name is password.

In this example, the required key is password, so the query string is the Vault API path, without any leading /.

Here, the Vault API path is aws/creds/my-role and the required key is secret_key.

["Geneos"] ["Geneos > Gateway"] ["Technical Reference"]

Was this topic helpful?