Certificates for PKI

updated: 2019-08-23 18:48
Contents

Certificates for PKI

PKI stands for Public Key Infrastructure. Tokens are documents, cryptographically signed using the X509 standard. In order to work correctly token generation requires a public/private key pair. The public key must be signed in an X509 certificate, and the certificate used to sign it must be available as a Certificate Authority (CA) certificate. These files can be generated either using the keystone-manage utility, or externally generated. The files need to be in the locations specified by the top level Identity service configuration file /etc/keystone/keystone.conf as specified in the above section. Additionally, the private key should only be readable by the system user that will run the Identity service.

Warning

The certificates can be world readable, but the private key cannot be. The private key should only be readable by the account that is going to sign tokens. When generating files with the keystone-manage pki_setup command, your best option is to run as the pki user. If you run keystone-manage as root, you can append --keystone-user and --keystone-group parameters to set the user name and group keystone is going to run under.

The values that specify where to read the certificates are under the [signing] section of the configuration file. The configuration values are:

  • certfile
    Location of certificate used to verify tokens. Default is /etc/keystone/ssl/certs/signing_cert.pem.
  • keyfile
    Location of private key used to sign tokens. Default is /etc/keystone/ssl/private/signing_key.pem.
  • ca_certs
    Location of certificate for the authority that issued the above certificate. Default is /etc/keystone/ssl/certs/ca.pem.
  • ca_key
    Location of the private key used by the CA. Default is /etc/keystone/ssl/private/cakey.pem.
  • key_size
    Default is 2048.
  • valid_days
    Default is 3650.
  • cert_subject
    Certificate subject (auto generated certificate) for token signing. Default is /C=US/ST=Unset/L=Unset/O=Unset/CN=www.example.com.

When generating certificates with the keystone-manage pki_setup command, the ca_key, key_size, and valid_days configuration options are used.

If the keystone-manage pki_setup command is not used to generate certificates, or you are providing your own certificates, these values do not need to be set.

If provider=keystone.token.providers.uuid.Provider in the [token] section of the keystone configuration file, a typical token looks like 53f7f6ef0cc344b5be706bcc8b1479e1. If provider=keystone.token.providers.pki.Provider, a typical token is a much longer string, such as:

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b2ludHMiOiBbeyJhZG1pblVSTCI6ICJodHRwOi8vMTkyLjE2OC4yNy4xMDA6ODc3NC92Mi9jMmM1OWI0ZDNkMjg0ZDhmYTA5ZjE2OWNiMTgwMGUwNiIsICJyZWdpb24iOiAiUmVnaW9u
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Sign certificate issued by external CA

You can use a signing certificate issued by an external CA instead of generated by keystone-manage. However, a certificate issued by an external CA must satisfy the following conditions:

  • All certificate and key files must be in Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format
  • Private key files must not be protected by a password

When using a signing certificate issued by an external CA, you do not need to specify key_size, valid_days, and ca_password as they will be ignored.

The basic workflow for using a signing certificate issued by an external CA involves:

  1. Request Signing Certificate from External CA
  2. Convert certificate and private key to PEM if needed
  3. Install External Signing Certificate

Request a signing certificate from an external CA

One way to request a signing certificate from an external CA is to first generate a PKCS #10 Certificate Request Syntax (CRS) using OpenSSL CLI.

Create a certificate request configuration file. For example, create the cert_req.conf file, as follows:

[ req ]
default_bits            = 4096
default_keyfile         = keystonekey.pem
default_md              = sha256

prompt                  = no
distinguished_name      = distinguished_name

[ distinguished_name ]
countryName             = US
stateOrProvinceName     = CA
localityName            = Sunnyvale
organizationName        = OpenStack
organizationalUnitName  = Keystone
commonName              = Keystone Signing
emailAddress            = keystone@openstack.org

Then generate a CRS with OpenSSL CLI. Do not encrypt the generated private key. You must use the -nodes option.

For example:

$ openssl req -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout signing_key.pem -keyform PEM \
  -out signing_cert_req.pem -outform PEM -config cert_req.conf -nodes

If everything is successful, you should end up with signing_cert_req.pem and signing_key.pem. Send signing_cert_req.pem to your CA to request a token signing certificate and make sure to ask the certificate to be in PEM format. Also, make sure your trusted CA certificate chain is also in PEM format.

Install an external signing certificate

Assuming you have the following already:

  • signing_cert.pem
    (Keystone token) signing certificate in PEM format
  • signing_key.pem
    Corresponding (non-encrypted) private key in PEM format
  • cacert.pem
    Trust CA certificate chain in PEM format

Copy the above to your certificate directory. For example:

# mkdir -p /etc/keystone/ssl/certs
# cp signing_cert.pem /etc/keystone/ssl/certs/
# cp signing_key.pem /etc/keystone/ssl/certs/
# cp cacert.pem /etc/keystone/ssl/certs/
# chmod -R 700 /etc/keystone/ssl/certs

Note

Make sure the certificate directory is only accessible by root.

Note

The procedure of copying the key and cert files may be improved if done after first running keystone-manage pki_setup since this command also creates other needed files, such as the index.txt and serial files.

Also, when copying the necessary files to a different server for replicating the functionality, the entire directory of files is needed, not just the key and cert files.

If your certificate directory path is different from the default /etc/keystone/ssl/certs, make sure it is reflected in the [signing] section of the configuration file.

Switching out expired signing certificates

The following procedure details how to switch out expired signing certificates with no cloud outages.

  1. Generate a new signing key.
  2. Generate a new certificate request.
  3. Sign the new certificate with the existing CA to generate a new signing_cert.
  4. Append the new signing_cert to the old signing_cert. Ensure the old certificate is in the file first.
  5. Remove all signing certificates from all your hosts to force OpenStack Compute to download the new signing_cert.
  6. Replace the old signing key with the new signing key. Move the new signing certificate above the old certificate in the signing_cert file.
  7. After the old certificate reads as expired, you can safely remove the old signing certificate from the file.
updated: 2019-08-23 18:48
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