impersonator

Documentation

Overview

Package impersonator implements an HTTP server that reverse proxies all requests to the Kubernetes API server with impersonation headers set to match the calling user. Since impersonation cannot be disabled, this allows us to dynamically configure authentication on any cluster, even the cloud hosted ones.

The specifics of how it is implemented are of interest. The most novel detail about the implementation is that we use the "front-end" of the aggregated API server logic, mainly the DefaultBuildHandlerChain func, to handle how incoming requests are authenticated, authorized, etc. The "back-end" of the proxy is a reverse proxy that impersonates the user (instead of serving REST APIs). Since impersonation fails open, we impersonate users via a secondary service account that has no other permissions on the cluster.

In terms of authentication, we aim to handle every type of authentication that the Kubernetes API server supports by delegating most of the checks to it. We also honor client certs from a CA that is specific to the impersonation proxy. This approach allows clients to use the Token Credential Request API even when we do not have the cluster's signing key.

The proxy will honor cluster configuration in regards to anonymous authentication. When disabled, the proxy will not authenticate these requests. There is one caveat in that Pinniped itself provides the Token Credential Request API which is used specifically by anonymous users to retrieve credentials. This API is the single API that will remain available even when anonymous authentication is disabled.

In terms of authorization, in addition to the regular checks that the Kubernetes API server will make for the impersonated user, we perform the same authorization checks via subject access review calls. This protects us from scenarios where we fail to correctly impersonate the user due to some bug in our proxy logic. We rely completely on the Kubernetes API server to perform admission checks on the impersonated requests.

Nested impersonation is handled by performing the same authorization checks the Kubernetes API server would (we get this mostly for free by using the aggregated API server code). We preserve the original user in the reserved extra key original-user-info.impersonation-proxy.concierge.pinniped.dev as a JSON blob of the authenticationv1.UserInfo struct. This is necessary to make sure that the Kubernetes audit log contains all three identities (original user, impersonated user and the impersonation proxy's service account). Capturing the original user information requires that we enable the auditing stack (WithImpersonation only shares this information with the audit stack). To keep things simple, we use the fake audit backend at the Metadata level for all requests. This guarantees that we always have an audit event on every request.

One final wrinkle is that impersonation cannot impersonate UIDs (yet). This is problematic because service account tokens always assert a UID. To handle this case without losing authentication information, when we see an identity with a UID that was asserted via a bearer token, we simply pass the request through with the original bearer token and no impersonation headers set (as if the user had made the request directly against the Kubernetes API server).

For all normal requests, we only use http/2.0 when proxying to the API server. For upgrade requests, we only use http/1.1 since these always go from http/1.1 to either websockets or SPDY.

Index

• func New(port int, dynamicCertProvider dynamiccert.Private, ...) (func(stopCh <-chan struct{}) error, error)
• type FactoryFunc

Functions

func New

func New(
	port int,
	dynamicCertProvider dynamiccert.Private,
	impersonationProxySignerCA dynamiccert.Public,
) (func(stopCh <-chan struct{}) error, error)

Types

type FactoryFunc

type FactoryFunc func(
	port int,
	dynamicCertProvider dynamiccert.Private,
	impersonationProxySignerCA dynamiccert.Public,
) (func(stopCh <-chan struct{}) error, error)

FactoryFunc is a function which can create an impersonator server. It returns a function which will start the impersonator server. That start function takes a stopCh which can be used to stop the server. Once a server has been stopped, don't start it again using the start function. Instead, call the factory function again to get a new start function.