We have a mondogDB deployment currently in our test environment. We have a 7 member Replica Set and no Arbiter.
We want to configure the data replication between the replica set members secure.
We don't want to configure SSL for the clients to our MongoDB cluster as the communication from the client to this MongoDB cluster is via Stunnel. So the client doesn't need to use SSL to connect.
Just curious to see if this possible i.e configure only the data being replicated between replica set members Secure but not the actual communication from the Client to this MongoDB cluster
_THanks much
I've not tried this personally but I do believe you can do this. In addition to compiling mongodb with ssl, or purchasing one of the MongoDb subscriptions that support SSL you will need to run with the following option:
--sslMode
set to preferSSL. This will use SSL for inter-server communications but allow both SSL and non-SSL for other connections:
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/program/mongod/
That of course is all in addition to the other configuration settings required for running with SSL:
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/configure-ssl/
Note that this is new for version 2.6. I don't have a version of mongodb compiled with ssl support so it's not been tested by me.
#DurgaDeep in MongoDB v2.6 you can run the MongoDB instance in mixed mode SSL while also specifying the x509 certificates for the cluster members to authenticate each other. Please note that SSL is not part of the default community build and you may need to build the binary on your own if you are using community build. x509 certificates is only available on subscription builds so that will not work for you if you are using a community build.
The easiest option to achieve what you want to do irrespective of the MongoDB version would be to setup stunnel between the replica-set nodes and let it take care of encrypted channel independently. This is the usual route a lot of applications take which do not have SSL embedded as an option.
Related
After reviewing several MongoDB official documents (see list at the bottom) I understand that MongoDB security in communications (as in community version 4.2) works as follows:
For internal communication authentication (i.e. between the members of a replica set or between mongos and the replica sets which implement the different shards) there are two mechanisms available:
shared keyfile (--keyFile)
x.509 certificates
For internal communication encryption, SSL/TLS is the only possibility. In other words, shared keyfile (--keyFile) provides only authentication, but if you want encryption you need to use SSL/TLS alternative. Using SSL/TLS requires to use x.509 certificates also (so, we can say that encryption also provides authentication)
For client to MongoDB communications (either standalone, replica set or mongos in a shard cluster):
there isn't keyfile option
the only way to secure communication (which provides both authentication and encryption) is SSL/TLS with x.509 certificates
I'd like just to confirm my understanding, as the documentation I have browsed is a little "disperse" and I'm not sure if I have got the point. Any feedback, comment, extra info or documentation pointers is really welcome!
PD: the statement which I'm most unsure is this one: "shared keyfile (--keyFile) provides only authentication, but if you want encryption you need to use SSL/TLS alternative"
References checked:
https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/configure-ssl
https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/configure-ssl-clients/
https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/security-internal-authentication
For client to MongoDB communications (either standalone, replica set or mongos in a shard cluster) there are several authentication methods:
No authentication
Internal authentication with username/password
Kerberos Authentication
LDAP Proxy Authentication
LDAP Authentication
Note, you can always connect to MongoDB database, even without an account. However, you are not permitted to execute any command unless you are authenticated.
I'm having some mongodb connection securtity concerns for my env.
Here is my environment:
one ECS hosted on cloud that has a public IP but no domain and no ssl certificate neither.
installed mongodb service on this ECS that needs username/password to authenticate
only specific IPs in the whitelist can access the ECS/mongodb
I'm wondering if the data transfer between this mongodb and my local pc is safe or not?
Will the data be encrpyted during the transmission or just plain text so that everyone on the internet can catch and read it? (As I don't have https so it's not using TLS/SSL)
Can canyone explain the machanism or give some some doc links?
Thanks!
As your not using SSL, your data on fly is not encrypted. You need to use TLS/SSL to encrypt the network transmission. You must have the TLS/SSL certificates as PEM files, which are concatenated certificate containers
In addition to encrypting connections, TLS/SSL allows for authentication using certificates, both for client authentication and for internal authentication of members of replica sets and sharded clusters
I've got a spring boot app which is connected to mongodb atlas.
Everything is working locally.
I now want to publish this to pivotal cloud foundry.
Secure connection between PCF and atlas
In mongodb atlas I need to open up the firewall an allow certain ip numbers.
How should I configure mongodb atlas to connect to pcf in the most secure way?
Autoconfigure getting in the way
cloud foundry is overriding my connection urls to point to localhost:27017 instead of my atlas cluster.
What is the recommended way to connect to mongodb atlas?
In mongodb atlas I need to open up the firewall an allow certain ip numbers. How should I configure mongodb atlas to connect to pcf in the most secure way?
White listing IP addresses for applications that run on CF is not particularly effective. The reason it's not effective is that you don't know the IP address from which you'll be connecting, because it depends on where Diego decides to run your application. In other words, it depends on the cell where your application is told to run. To compound matters, that will change when you restart / restage your application.
Because the IP can vary, what you end up needing to do is white list all of your Cells. The problem with this and why it's not effective is that you've ended up white listing every app running on the platform.
What you can do to improve the security a bit is to make use of application security groups. ASG's can be used to limit outgoing traffic. You can also control them at the space level. That means you can configure your default running security group to not allow access to your MongoDb server, but you can allow access for individual spaces by binding an ASG to only those spaces with apps that need to talk to your MongoDb servers.
The downside of this approach is that it requires you to be a platform administrator, which means it will only work if you own your CF installation (not going to work for public providers).
More on ASG's here: https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/adminguide/app-sec-groups.html
For public providers, you can use a proxy. To make this work, you need to have your application configured to talk through a proxy when it attempts to access your Mongodb servers. You control the proxies, which have fixed IPs, so you can white list the proxies to allow access to just your app. If you don't want to run your own proxy servers, there are public proxy providers that you can use.
cloud foundry is overriding my connection urls to point to localhost:27017 instead of my atlas cluster. What is the recommended way to connect to mongodb atlas?
It's possible to disable auto configuration. One way is described in the docs here. If you include the Spring Cloud Connectors dependencies and use them manually, then the auto configuration will not run.
https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/buildpacks/java/spring-service-bindings.html#manual
The other option is to tell the Java build pack not to install the auto configuration. You can do that by setting the following environment variable for your application, either with cf set-env or via a manifest.yml file.
Ex: JBP_CONFIG_SPRING_AUTO_RECONFIGURATION='[enabled: false]'
Be careful if you do this as it will disable everything provided by the auto reconfiguration, which includes setting the "cloud" profile for your app. If you use this option to disable auto reconfiguration, you'll probably also want to set SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE='cloud' to manually enable the cloud profile.
I suppose your other option is to simply embrace the auto configuration. It's a little confusing / magical at first, but I've found this article to explain it very well.
https://spring.io/blog/2015/04/27/binding-to-data-services-with-spring-boot-in-cloud-foundry
Hope that helps!
I am trying to set up mongoid to connect to a mongodb server using ssl with client certificates for authentication. However, I cannot find a comprehensive reference for the options in mongoid.yml .
For example, I found this: How to enable SSL/TLS in Mongoid 3 client? - which references a ssl: true option (which seems to work), but that mongoid.yml option does not appear to be documented anywhere I can find.
I am able to connect using the client certificate using the mongo shell. If I leave out the ssl: true option in mongoid.yml, at the server I get "AssertionException handling request, closing client connection: 17189 The server is configured to only allow SSL connections"
If I do use the ssl: true option, I get "ERROR: no SSL certificate provided by peer; connection rejected" suggesting that the ssl: true option is working.
So, is there a way to provide the client cert/key and ca cert to mongoid using mongoid.yml? Or is there another way to make the connection to the mongod and provide the connection to mongoid? Or is it simply not possible to use ssl client certificates for authentication with mongoid?
This question was posted several years ago, before the Mongoid gem was taken over by the MongoDB team. Mongoid 5 is a significant upgrade, and the documentation has also been dramatically improved.
I updated my applications to use Mongoid 5; the biggest change was that I had been using the lower level driver (Moped) for some operations, for better efficiency. However, with Mongoid 5, the standard ruby MongoDB driver is used, so I had to rewrite the code that used the lower level driver.
However, it was well worth it. Among the improvements in Mongoid 5 is documentation that clearly explains how to provide the client cert/key and ca cert to the Mongoid driver at https://docs.mongodb.com/ecosystem/tutorial/mongoid-installation/
You will also want to provide the matching configuration for the mongod server, which is explained at https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/configure-ssl/
Also, as indicated on that latter page, as of MongoDB distributions now include support for SSL.
How are Cassandra clusters usually built in security way? Should they always be kept locally or are there any security functions that makes it reasonable to open up for external connections to the cluster? As far as I've understand I seems like Cassandra doesn't have any "inbuild security engine" for handling these kind of things. I'm planning on building a service to talk with the Cassandra from, should that connection be made locally (on the same net as the cluster) or from external using the DNS?
Cassandra supports builtin password authentication and authorisation since version 1.2.
User credentials and privileges are kept internally, in system auth tables. This can be viewed as its "inbuild security engine".
As for protecting connections (encryption), since version 1.2, there's SSL support for both internode and client-to-node communication. DataStax Enterprise platform additionally extends that with Kerberos/LDAP support to allow single-sign-on.
Configure a stateful firewall to allow incoming connections, but allow outgoing only if someone requested something from the server. Also C* has inbuilt SSL support, but not all APIs can use the SSL, so you'll have to pick a compatible one.