Access Requests with Slack

This guide will explain how to set up Slack to receive Access Request messages from Teleport. Teleport's Slack integration notifies individuals and channels of Access Requests. Users can then approve and deny Access Requests from within Slack, making it easier to implement security best practices without compromising productivity.

Here is an example of sending an Access Request via Teleport's Slack plugin:

Prerequisites

• Slack admin privileges to create an app and install it to your workspace. Your Slack profile must have the "Workspace Owner" or "Workspace Admin" banner below your profile picture.
• Either a Linux host or Kubernetes cluster where you will run the Slack plugin.

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  12.1.1
CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

tsh login --proxy=myinstance.teleport.sh [email protected]
tctl status
Cluster  myinstance.teleport.sh
Version  12.1.1
CA pin   sha256:sha-hash-here

Step 1/8. Define RBAC resources

Before you set up the Slack plugin, you will need to enable Role Access Requests in your Teleport cluster.

For the purpose of this guide, we will define an editor-requester role, which can request the built-in editor role, and an editor-reviewer role that can review requests for the editor role.

Create a file called editor-request-rbac.yaml with the following content:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: editor-reviewer
spec:
  allow:
    review_requests:
      roles: ['editor']
---
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: editor-requester
spec:
  allow:
    request:
      roles: ['editor']
      thresholds:
        - approve: 1
          deny: 1

Create the roles you defined:

tctl create -f editor-request-rbac.yaml
role 'editor-reviewer' has been created
role 'editor-requester' has been created

Allow yourself to review requests by users with the editor-requester role by assigning yourself the editor-reviewer role.

Assign the editor-reviewer role to your Teleport user by running the following commands, depending on whether you authenticate as a local Teleport user or via the github, saml, or oidc authentication connectors:

tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > out.yaml

  roles:
   - access
   - auditor
   - editor
+  - editor-reviewer

tctl create -f out.yaml

tctl get github/github --with-secrets > github.yaml

  teams_to_roles:
    - organization: octocats
      team: admins
      roles:
        - access
+       - editor-reviewer

tctl create -f github.yaml

tctl get saml/mysaml --with-secrets > saml.yaml

  attributes_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - editor-reviewer

tctl create -f saml.yaml

tctl get oidc/myoidc --with-secrets > oidc.yaml

  claims_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - editor-reviewer

tctl create -f saml.yaml

Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again to assume the new role.

Create a user called myuser who has the editor-requester role. This user cannot edit your cluster configuration unless they request the editor role:

tctl users add myuser --roles=editor-requester

tctl will print an invitation URL to your terminal. Visit the URL and log in as myuser for the first time, registering credentials as configured for your Teleport cluster.

Later in this guide, you will have myuser request the editor role so you can review the request using the Teleport plugin.

Step 2/8. Install the Teleport Slack plugin

We currently only provide linux-amd64 binaries. You can also compile these plugins from source. You can run the plugin from a remote host or your local development machine.

curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-access-slack-v12.1.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
tar -xzf teleport-access-slack-v12.1.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
./teleport-access-slack/install

teleport-slack version
teleport-slack v12.1.1 git:teleport-slack-v12.1.1-fffffffff go1.19

Check out the teleport-plugins repository
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins.git
cd teleport-plugins/access/slack
make

mv ./build/teleport-slack /usr/local/bin

teleport-slack version
teleport-slack v12.1.1 git:teleport-slack-v12.1.1-fffffffff go1.19

helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev

helm repo update

Step 3/8. Create a user and role for the plugin

Teleport's Access Request plugins authenticate to your Teleport cluster as a user with permissions to list and read Access Requests. This way, plugins can retrieve Access Requests from the Teleport Auth Service and present them to reviewers.

Define a user and role called access-plugin by adding the following content to a file called access-plugin.yaml:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
      - resources: ['access_request']
        verbs: ['list', 'read']
      - resources: ['access_plugin_data']
        verbs: ['update']
---
kind: user
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  roles: ['access-plugin']
version: v2

Create the user and role:

tctl create -f access-plugin.yaml

As with all Teleport users, the Teleport Auth Service authenticates the access-plugin user by issuing short-lived TLS credentials. In this case, we will need to request the credentials manually by impersonating the access-plugin role and user.

If you are using tctl from the Auth Service host, you will already have impersonation privileges.

To grant your user impersonation privileges for access-plugin, define a role called access-plugin-impersonator by pasting the following YAML document into a file called access-plugin-impersonator.yaml:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: access-plugin-impersonator
spec:
  allow:
    impersonate:
      roles:
      - access-plugin
      users:
      - access-plugin

Create the access-plugin-impersonator role:

tctl create -f access-plugin-impersonator.yaml

Assign the access-plugin-impersonator role to your Teleport user by running the following commands, depending on whether you authenticate as a local Teleport user or via the github, saml, or oidc authentication connectors:

tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > out.yaml

  roles:
   - access
   - auditor
   - editor
+  - access-plugin-impersonator

tctl create -f out.yaml

tctl get github/github --with-secrets > github.yaml

  teams_to_roles:
    - organization: octocats
      team: admins
      roles:
        - access
+       - access-plugin-impersonator

tctl create -f github.yaml

tctl get saml/mysaml --with-secrets > saml.yaml

  attributes_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - access-plugin-impersonator

tctl create -f saml.yaml

tctl get oidc/myoidc --with-secrets > oidc.yaml

  claims_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - access-plugin-impersonator

tctl create -f saml.yaml

Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again to assume the new role.

You will now be able to generate signed certificates for the access-plugin role and user.

Step 4/8. Export the access plugin identity

Like all Teleport users, access-plugin needs signed credentials in order to connect to your Teleport cluster. You will use the tctl auth sign command to request these credentials for your plugin.

The format of the credentials depends on whether you have set up your network to give the plugin direct access to the Teleport Auth Service, or if all Teleport clients and services connect to the Teleport Proxy Service instead.

tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth.pem

tctl auth sign --format=tls --user=access-plugin --out=auth

tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth

kubectl create secret generic teleport-mattermost-identity --from-file=auth_id=auth.pem

tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth

kubectl create secret generic teleport-mattermost-identity --from-file=auth_id=auth.pem

The rest of this guide assumes that you have placed any files generated by this command into /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack for later reference when configuring the plugin:

create a data directory to hold certificate files for the plugin.
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack
sudo mv auth.* /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack

Step 5/8. Register a Slack app

The Access Request plugin for Slack receives Access Request events from the Teleport Auth Service, formats them into Slack messages, and sends them to the Slack API to post them in your workspace. For this to work, you must register a new app with the Slack API.

Create your app

Visit https://api.slack.com/apps to create a new Slack app. Click "Create an App", then "From scratch". Fill in the form as shown below:

The "App Name" should be "Teleport". Click the "Development Slack Workspace" dropdown and choose the workspace where you would like to see Access Request messages.

Generate an OAuth token with scopes

Next, configure your application to authenticate to the Slack API. We will do this by generating an OAuth token that the plugin will present to the Slack API.

We will restrict the plugin to the narrowest possible permissions by using OAuth scopes. The Slack plugin needs to post messages to your workspace. It also needs to read usernames and email addresses in order to direct Access Request notifications from the Auth Service to the appropriate Teleport users in Slack.

After creating your app, the Slack website will open a console where you can specify configuration options. On the sidebar menu under "Features", click "OAuth & Permissions".

Scroll to the "Scopes" section and click "Add an OAuth Scope" for each of the following scopes:

• chat:write
• incoming-webhook
• users:read
• users:read.email

The result should look like this:

After you have configured scopes for your plugin, scroll back to the top of the OAuth & Permissions page, find the "OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace" section, and click "Install to Workspace". You will see a summary of the permission you configured for the Slack plugin earlier.

In "Where should Teleport post?", choose "Slackbot" as the default channel the plugin will post to. The plugin will post here when sending direct messages. Later in this guide, we will configure the plugin to post in other channels as well.

After submitting this form, you will see an OAuth token in the "OAuth & Permissions" tab under "Tokens for Your Workspace":

You will use this token later when configuring the Slack plugin.

Step 6/8. Configure the Teleport Slack plugin

At this point, the Teleport Slack plugin has the credentials it needs to communicate with your Teleport cluster and the Slack API. In this step, you will configure the Slack plugin to use these credentials. You will also configure the plugin to notify the right Slack channels when it receives an Access Request update.

Create a config file

teleport-slack configure | sudo tee /etc/teleport-slack.toml > /dev/null

# Copied from https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins/blob/master/access/slack/example_config.toml

# Example Slack plugin configuration TOML file

[teleport]
# This section 

# Teleport Auth/Proxy Server address.
# addr = "example.com:3025"
#
# Should be port 3025 for Auth Server and 3080 or 443 for Proxy.
# For Teleport Cloud, should be in the form "your-account.teleport.sh:443".

# Credentials generated with `tctl auth sign`.
#
# When using --format=file:
# identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth_id"    # Identity file
#
# When using --format=tls:
# client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.key" # Teleport TLS secret key
# client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.crt" # Teleport TLS certificate
# root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.cas"   # Teleport CA certs

[slack]
# Slack Bot OAuth token
# You can also use an absolute path to a token file, e.g., 
# "/var/lib/teleport/token"
token = "xoxb-11xx"

[role_to_recipients]
# Map roles to recipients.
#
# Provide slack user_email/channel recipients for access requests for specific roles. 
# role.suggested_reviewers will automatically be treated as additional email recipients.
# "*" must be provided to match non-specified roles.
#
# "dev" = "devs-slack-channel"
# "*" = ["[email protected]", "admin-slack-channel"]

[log]
output = "stderr" # Logger output. Could be "stdout", "stderr" or "/var/lib/teleport/slack.log"
severity = "INFO" # Logger severity. Could be "INFO", "ERROR", "DEBUG" or "WARN".

teleport: {}
  # address: "teleportauth:3025"                        # Teleport Auth Server GRPC API address
  # identitySecretName: teleport-plugin-slack-identity  # Secret containing identity

slack:
  token: "xoxb-11xx"  # Slack Bot OAuth token

# Mapping from role to recipients
roleToRecipients: []
  # "dev": "devs-slack-channel"
  # "*": ["[email protected]", "admin-slack-channel"]

Edit the config file

Open the configuration file created for the Teleport Slack plugin and update the following fields:

[teleport]

The Slack plugin uses this section to connect to the Teleport Auth Service.

The address and credentials you configure depend on whether your plugin can access the Auth Service directly:

[teleport]
addr = "localhost:3025"
client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.key" # Teleport GRPC client secret key
client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.crt" # Teleport GRPC client certificate
root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.cas"   # Teleport cluster CA certs

[teleport]
addr = "teleport.example.com:443"
identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.pem"

[slack]

token: Open https://api.slack.com/apps, find the Slack app you created earlier, navigate to the "OAuth & Permissions" tab, copy the "Bot User OAuth Token", and paste it into this field.

[role_to_recipients]

The role_to_recipients map configure the channels that the Slack plugin will notify when a user requests access to a specific role. When the Slack plugin receives an Access Request from the Auth Service, it will look up the role being requested and identify the Slack channels to notify.

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "admin-slack-channel"
"dev" = ["dev-slack-channel", "admin-slack-channel"]
"dba" = "[email protected]"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "admin-slack-channel"
  "dev":
    - "dev-slack-channel"
    - "admin-slack-channel"
  "dba": "[email protected]"

In the role_to_recipients map, each key is the name of a Teleport role. Each value configures the Slack channel (or channels) to notify. The value can be a single string or an array of strings. Each string must be either the name of a Slack channel (including a user's direct message channel) or the email address of a Slack user. If the recipient is an email address, the Slack plugin will use that email address to look up a direct message channel.

The role_to_recipients map must also include an entry for "*", which the plugin looks up if no other entry matches a given role name. In the example above, requests for roles aside from dev and dba will notify the admin-slack-channel channel.

tsh request create --roles=dbadmin [email protected],[email protected]

Configure the Slack plugin to notify you when a user requests the editor role by adding the following to your role_to_recipients config (replace TELEPORT_USERNAME with the user you assigned the editor-reviewer role earlier):

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "access-requests"
"editor" = "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "access-requests"
  "editor": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

Either create an access-requests channel in your Slack workspace or rename the value of the "*" key to an existing channel.

Invite your Slack app

Once you have configured the channels that the Slack plugin will notify when it receives an Access Request, you will need to ensure that the plugin can post in those channels.

You have already configured the plugin to send direct messages as Slackbot. For any other channel you mention in your role_to_recipients map, you will need to invite the plugin to that channel. Navigate to each channel and enter /invite @teleport in the message box.

Step 7/8. Test your Slack app

Once Teleport is running, you've created the Slack app, and the plugin is configured, you can now run the plugin and test the workflow.

teleport-slack start

teleport-slack start
INFO   Starting Teleport Access Slack Plugin 7.2.1: slack/app.go:80
INFO   Plugin is ready slack/app.go:101

helm upgrade --install teleport-plugin-slack teleport/teleport-plugin-slack --values teleport-slack-helm.yaml

kubectl logs deploy/teleport-plugin-slack

kubectl rollout restart deployment teleport-plugin-slack

Create an Access Request and check if the plugin works as expected with the following steps.

Create an Access Request

• As an Admin
• As a User
• From the Web UI

A Teleport admin can create an Access Request for another user with tctl:

tctl request create myuser --roles=editor

Users can use tsh to create an Access Request and log in with approved roles:

tsh request create --roles=editor
Seeking request approval... (id: 8f77d2d1-2bbf-4031-a300-58926237a807)

Users can request access using the Web UI by visiting the "Access Requests" tab and clicking "New Request":

The user you configured earlier to review the request should receive a direct message from "Teleport" in Slack allowing them to visit a link in the Teleport Web UI and either approve or deny the request.

Resolve the request

Once you receive an Access Request message, click the link to visit Teleport and approve or deny the request:

Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tctl request approve REQUEST_ID
tctl request deny REQUEST_ID

Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tsh request review --approve REQUEST_ID
tsh request review --deny REQUEST_ID

Once the request is resolved, the Slack bot will add an emoji reaction of ✅ or ❌ to the Slack message for the Access Request, depending on whether the request was approved or denied.

Step 8/8. Set up systemd

This section is only relevant if you are running the Teleport Slack plugin on a Linux host.

In production, we recommend starting the Teleport plugin daemon via an init system like systemd. Here's the recommended Teleport plugin service unit file for systemd:

[Unit]
Description=Teleport Slack Plugin
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-slack start --config=/etc/teleport-slack.toml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-slack.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save this as teleport-slack.service in either /usr/lib/systemd/system/ or another unit file load path supported by systemd.

Enable and start the plugin:

sudo systemctl enable teleport-slack
sudo systemctl start teleport-slack

Next steps

• Read our guides to configuring Resource Access Requests and Role Access Requests so you can get the most out of your Access Request plugins.

Feedback

If you have any issues with this plugin, please create a GitHub issue in our gravitational/teleport-plugins repo.