I'm automating the provisioning of a VM in a keberized environment. After the new server is created it needs to join a network. For this, I need to login to the kerberos server using kinit and then use net ads join.
the challenge for me is where do I store the principal's password that I need to pass to the kinit and how do I retrieve it securely. Of course the requirement is that the automation program must be the only one that can retrieve the password from where ever it is stored.
Options I've considered so far:
1) I already know the option of storing the password in a vault(Hashicorp, Cyber Ark etc.,), but it takes too long to implement/manage and then it's expensive.
2) Store the encrypted password in another VM(within the same private network) in an environment variable and at runtime ssh into that VM and get the password, decrypt it, and then scp it over to the newly created VM.
Do any of the security experts here see issues with (2)? If yes, what are those?
What other options do exist, if any?
Thanks in advance
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We have a PowerShell script to pull Power BI activity data (using Get-PowerBIActivityEvent), and I have been trying to automate it so that it can pull this data daily using an unattended account. The problem is the script must necessarily use the Connect-PowerBIServiceAccount cmdlet, which requires a credential. I don't want to have the passwords hard-coded anywhere (obviously) and ideally don't want to be passing it into the script as a plaintext parameter in case of memory leaks.
I've tried using SSIS as a scheduling mechanism since it allows for encrypted parameters in script tasks, but can't call the PS script with a SecureString parameter since the System.Management.Automation namespace isn't in the GAC (a commandline call wouldn't be possible).
I don't believe task scheduler would offer the functionality needed.
Does anyone know of any elegant ways to connect to the power BI service using encrypted credentials?
In the docs of Connect-PowerBIServiceAccount there are 2 options for unattended sign-in:
Using -Credential, where you pass AAD client ID as username and application secret key as password
Using -CertificateThumbprint and -ApplicationId
For both options you need to configure service pricipal and add proper permissions. I'm not going into details how to configure that, but most probably you'd need (at least) the following application permissions:
I'm not really sure what functionalities you need in the script, but in my experience, majority of the cases can be covered by scheduled task, so the explanation below will apply to that solution.
How you can secure the credentials?
There are variuos possible solutions, depending on your preferences. I'd consider certificate-based authentication as more secure (certificate is available only to current user/all users of the machine).
What's important in certificate-based authentication - make sure that the certificate is available for the account running the script (in many cases it's service account, not your user account).
How can I secure more?
If you want, you can store application ID as secure string (I don't have SSIS to test, so I'm not sure if there's any workaround to make it working in there) or use Export-CliXml. They use Windows Data Protection API (DPAPI), so the file can be decrypted only by the account which was used to encrypt.
To add one more level of security (I'm not even mentioning setting correct access rights to the files as it's obvious) you might put the file in the folder encrypted (you might already have a solution for disk encryption, so use it if you wish).
There are probably some solutions to secure the keys even better, but these ones should do the job. I'm using other Microsoft 365 modules with similar approach (Outlook, SharePoint PnP) and it works quite well.
NOTE: If you need to use user account, instead of service principal, make sure that you have MultiFactor Authentication disabled on that account for that specific application.
The relevant documentation to this (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embed-service-principal) states that admin APIs (i.e. those served via Get-PowerBiActivityEvent) do not currently support service principals. This means it's not currently possible to use a registered app to run these cmdlets unattended.
There is a feature request open to provide this at the moment: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/39641572-need-service-principle-support-for-admin-api
I'm new to DB2 database. I installed DB2 Express-C on my local machine (Windows 10) to play with it, and I created a sample database.
If I understand correctly, DB2 uses Windows accounts for access to database. The installation created a db2admin user, but this one does not have access to the sample database. So my understanding is that my Windows account has access to this database.
So here is the problem. My company uses Azure Active Directory accounts, using Windows Hello to log in - that means, using a PIN to log in instead of a password (meaning my password does not work for login). However, if I want to connect to the database, I need to do this with my account's password. How can I do this? Do I need to create a local account on my machine instead of using Azure account?
If you are able to create a local-user on your workstation, and assign it a password, and ensure it is a member of local groups DB2USERS (and optionally) DB2ADMNS if those local-groups exist, that is likely to be the easiest option.
You may need to have Windows local-administrative rights to be able to perform those actions.
You can then connect to any local Db2-databases with that local-account and its password (regardless of how you sign-in to Windows).
If you allowed Db2-installation to create local user db2admin (and give it a password) then that local-account is also able to connect to local Db2-databases, including the SAMPLE database. So it's unclear why you write that db2admin account does not have access to SAMPLE database. As long as db2admin has a valid password then that account can connect to SAMPLE if all default settings are active.
Db2-LUW is able to integrate with Active-Directory provided pre-requisites are met and special configuration is performed, see documentation. But unless you have special security plugins for Db2, then any account that wants to connect to local Db2-databases will need a password. With special security plugins, other forms of authentication are possible.
Windows 10 Azure account login gives license to only one user to access windows account. If you login with db2admin in your windows you might lost azure account I am facing such issues.
Better to communicate with IT team of your company and ask to provide DB2ADMN right to your Azure login user. DB2 install properly but not able to create database permission/authorization issue coming.
We are using Java Kerberos authentication to connect to our SQL Server DB from Linux. Here we had used the prinicipal name and the password to generate a keytab file on the Linux system. Currently the connectivity works fine.
But there has been an additional requirement to use expiring passwords, which expire every 3 months. In our other applications we use an API called CyberArk which retrieves the password from a vault and Ops team need not bother about changing the password on the application server located on the Linux system.
Does anyone have any experience on using Kerberos in such an enironment? We are basically looking at avoiding to regenerate the keytab file every time the password expires.
I don't think you can avoid to regenerate the keytab file in the event of password change or expiring. What you can do, however, is to make it painless to generate the keytab file on the Linux server. this require the Linux server joining the Active Directory, using RHEL native tool realm or Centrify software.
RHEL tool document is here https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/windows_integration_guide/realmd-domain
For Centrify user, https://community.centrify.com/t5/Centrify-Express/Replace-SSH-Keys-with-Kerberos-Keytabs/td-p/10112
My target site needs AD auth to browse and use the admin portal. All is fine there. This means syncing to this server via username and password authentication doesn't work. Does this mean i need to enable x.509 authentication?
If you mean using the Staging Module, the staging module's "Username and password" really is not linked to the actual CMS Users. You can put whatever Username and Password on the Destination server, and connect to it from the Source.
x.509 is also fine.
Tell me if you aren't talking about the Staging Module though.
You may need to do 1 of 2 things:
Enable mixed mode authentication. Yes the overall authentication doesn't need to use a physical cms_user user but since you have AD Authentication enabled, anytime another user or service tries to access a system page it may require them to log in.
Create a web.config location node in your /CMSPages/Staging/web.config file that excludes anyone or everyone to access a the SyncServer.asmx page within there.
Otherwise configure the x.509 certificate setup.
I have successfully created a Orion CB instance at fi-lab, and I am able to access via remote ssh. However, I am asked for a login user/password and all the standard user/password seems not to be valid.
What is the root password for "orion-psb-image-R4.1"?
Thanks in advance!
I know you already solved it, but just in case somebody is wondering I'll reply more fully to your question.
Due to security reasons, access to pre-built machines with username and password is disabled. You can only SSH into them using some kind of certificate of wich you have a private key (whether you created it on FIWARE Lab for this virtual machine or you had one prepared beforehand).