But ok., so you check that's locked down. But did you know that TLS connections can be re-negotiated, and re-AUTHENTICATED? It's nuts!! But yes, TLS supports this. The client can at any time decide to change the auth context.
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So instead people use "short certs". O.k. first let me point out that the security of this solution depends on how secure your server clocks are. If I can spoof NTP ... it was all .. dumb ... anyway.
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Next, let me ask, is there ANY good value for length of time here? Make it too short and you're going to have a lot of outages due to failure to renew certs quickly enough, Too long and it's not secure.
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Google's ALTS dodged a lot of this by having epochs that end up being a mix of time and CRL-like strategies. Smart move and dampens the tyre-fire somewhat. Never seen in the wild though!
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Now we get to my LEAST favorite part ... there are basically NO standards for logging credentials from certs, or for implementing authz. So admins just make up their own.
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Enter an MTLS infrastructure and you have to cross your fingers that they are even logging the user's names. NIGHTMARE to debug.
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And for authz the admins get "creative". Because certs basically encode strings, people start using them as arbitrary bearer tokens. Let's put group permissions in the cert itself, encoded in strings ... and then do access control with ... REGEXes!!
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ACTUAL SECURITY ISSUE I SAW IN THE WILD: The "administrative-assistants" has root-level access to everything for years, because their group name started with "admin" and the regex letting them in lacked a $ terminator!!
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Disclaimer: they were using Apache 2.0, and I wrote that regex supporting madness, and so it is my fault and I will pay for my sins.
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Anyway, back to MTLS, it is a hodgepodge of awfulness. Massive code base to implement, terrible standards in the middle, and just obscure untested garbage left and right. RUN AWAY!
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Yet it gets a reputation for being a best practice, maybe because it's hard, or because it has a halo from the false talisman of cryptography. *shudder* BAD, BAD, TERRIBAD.
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Anyway, that's the rant out of my system! AMA about MTLS if you want, and dear
@Unrollme - please unroll this thread.Show this thread
End of conversation
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