The HSCloud Public Key Infrastructure system is a lightweight specification on how microservices within the HSCloud ecosystem authenticate themselves.
The driving force behind this being standardized is to make it very easy for developers to write new microservices and other tools that can mutually authenticate themselves without having to use public TLS certificates, API tokens or passwords.
Each microservice or tool has a key/certificate pair that it uses to both serve incoming requests and to use as a client certificate when performing outgoing requests.
We currently support gRPC as a first-class transport. Other transports (HTTPS for debug pages, HTTPS for JSON(-RPC)) are not yet implemented.
Where do I get certificates from?
---------------------------------
The distribution of HSPKI certificates to production services is currently being designed (and will likely be based on Hashicorp Vault or a similar NIH tool). For development purposes, the `gen.sh` script in `dev-certs/` can be used to generate a temporary CA, service keypair and developer keypair.
Concepts
--------
All certs for mutual auth have the following CN/SAN format:
Currently you'll have to manually check the PKI information via your language's library and reject unauthorized access within your handler. A unified ACL system with an external RBAC store is currently being designed.
Go Library
==========
We provide a Go library that all microservices should use to interact with HSPKI.
Usage with gRPC
---------------
In lieu of a godoc (soon (TM)), here's a quick usage example:
import (
"code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/hspki"
)
...
g := grpc.NewServer(hspki.WithServerHSPKI()...)
pb.RegiserXXXServer(g, service)
...
Flags
-----
Once linked into your program, the following flags will be automatically present:
-hspki_realm string
PKI realm (default "svc.cluster.local")
-hspki_tls_ca_path string
Path to PKI CA certificate (default "pki/ca.pem")
-hspki_tls_certificate_path string
Path to PKI service certificate (default "pki/service.pem")
-hspki_tls_key_path string
Path to PKI service private key (default "pki/service-key.pem")
These should be set accordingly in your development environment.