Scaling Privileged Access for Modern Infrastructure: Real-World Insights
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Database Access with AWS OpenSearch

Version 15.x

Teleport can provide secure access to AWS OpenSearch via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through Teleport's RBAC.

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure an AWS OpenSearch Service via REST API with IAM Authentication.
  2. Join the AWS OpenSearch database to your Teleport cluster.
  3. Connect to the AWS OpenSearch database via the Teleport Database Service.

This guide shows how to enroll databases through the Teleport Database Service. For a more scalable approach, learn how to configure the Teleport Discovery Service to automatically enroll all AWS databases in your infrastructure.

Prerequisites

  • A running Teleport cluster. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool version >= 15.2.2.

    On Teleport Enterprise, you must use the Enterprise version of tctl, which you can download from your Teleport account workspace. Otherwise, visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh for Teleport Community Edition.

  • A host, e.g., an EC2 instance, where you will run the Teleport Database Service. This guide assumes an EC2 instance when creating and applying IAM roles, and must be adjusted accordingly for custom configurations.
  • To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines. For example: 
    tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
    tctl status
    Cluster  teleport.example.com
    Version  15.2.2
    CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
    If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.

This guide provides an example configuration of IAM access roles as a model, and uses an EC2 instance to serve the Teleport Database Service. The level of access provided may not suit your needs, or may not fit your organization's access conventions. You should adjust the AWS IAM permissions to fit your needs.

Step 1/4. Create IAM roles for OpenSearch Managed Cluster access

The setup described in this guide requires two IAM roles:

  • One associated with the EC2 instance running the Teleport Database Service, which lets it assume additional roles granted to the user.
  • One that can be assumed by the EC2 instance role and grants access to OpenSearch manage cluster to users.

EC2 instance role

Visit the IAM > Roles page of the AWS Console, then press "Create Role". Under Trusted entity type select "AWS service". Under Use case select "EC2", then click Next.

On the "Add Permissions" page, you can simply click Next since this role does not require any permissions. In this guide, we will use the example name TeleportDatabaseService for this role. Once you have chosen a name, click Create Role to complete the process.

OpenSearch Service cluster access role

Navigate back to the Roles page and create a new role. Select the "AWS account" option, which creates a default trust policy to allow other entities in this account to assume this role:

Click Next. On the next page, enter a role name. In this guide we'll use the example name ExampleTeleportOpenSearchRole for this role.

Under "Select trusted entities", update the JSON to allow the TeleportDatabaseService role to assume this role:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": [
                    "arn:aws:iam::abcd1234-this-is-an-example:role/TeleportDatabaseService"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
            "Condition": {}
        }
    ]
}

Finally, click Create Role.

Configure Cluster Fine-grained access control IAM Role mapping in Amazon OpenSearch Managed Custer

Teleport AWS OpenSearch service integration leverages the OpenSearch Fine-grained access control where the IAM role or user is mapped to the OpenSearch role.

In order to configure Role Mapping log into OpenSearch Domain Dashboard using the master user and go to the Security settings:

Select Get Started

Create a new role with least privilege permissions, or select an existing one. For the purpose of this example the readall OpenSearch role will be used. Select the OpenSearch role and go to the Mapped users tab:

Mapped User

Add mapping between the OpenSearch role and AWS IAM ExampleTeleportOpenSearchRole role created in the previous step.

IAM Role mapping

Finally, click the Map button to apply the settings.

Step 2/4. Configure the Teleport IAM role mapping

The next step is to give your Teleport users permissions to assume AWS IAM roles when accessing AWS resources through your Teleport cluster.

You can do this by creating a Teleport role with the db_users field listing the IAM role ARN created in the previous step. Create a file called aws-opensearch-access.yaml with the following content:

kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: aws-opensearch-access
spec:
  allow:
    db_labels:
      'env': 'dev'
    db_users:
    - 'ExampleTeleportOpenSearchRole'

Create the new role:

tctl create -f aws-opensearch-access.yaml

Assign the aws-opensearch-access role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \  --set-roles "${ROLES?},aws-opensearch-access"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

  1. Retrieve your github authentication connector:

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

    Note that the --with-secrets flag adds the value of spec.signing_key_pair.private_key to the github.yaml file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the github.yaml file immediately after updating the resource.

  2. Edit github.yaml, adding aws-opensearch-access to the teams_to_roles section.

    The team you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the team must include your user account and should be the smallest team possible within your organization.

    Here is an example:

      teams_to_roles:
    - organization: octocats
      team: admins
      roles:
        - access
+       - aws-opensearch-access

  3. Apply your changes:

    tctl create -f github.yaml

  4. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

  1. Retrieve your saml configuration resource:

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

    Note that the --with-secrets flag adds the value of spec.signing_key_pair.private_key to the saml.yaml file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the saml.yaml file immediately after updating the resource.

  2. Edit saml.yaml, adding aws-opensearch-access to the attributes_to_roles section.

    The attribute you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the group must include your user account and should be the smallest group possible within your organization.

    Here is an example:

      attributes_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - aws-opensearch-access

  3. Apply your changes:

    tctl create -f saml.yaml

  4. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

  1. Retrieve your oidc configuration resource:

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

    Note that the --with-secrets flag adds the value of spec.signing_key_pair.private_key to the oidc.yaml file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the oidc.yaml file immediately after updating the resource.

  2. Edit oidc.yaml, adding aws-opensearch-access to the claims_to_roles section.

    The claim you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the group must include your user account and should be the smallest group possible within your organization.

    Here is an example:

      claims_to_roles:
    - name: "groups"
      value: "my-group"
      roles:
        - access
+       - aws-opensearch-access

  3. Apply your changes:

    tctl create -f oidc.yaml

  4. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

Step 3/4. Install the Teleport Database Service

Create an EC2 instance to host the Teleport Database Service, and attach the TeleportDatabaseService AWS IAM role to it. If you're hosting the service another way, you must provide AWS credentials to the service - see AWS credentials configuration for more details.

non-standard AWS regions

For non-standard AWS regions such as AWS GovCloud (US) regions and AWS China regions, please set the corresponding region in the AWS_REGION environment variable or in the AWS credentials file so that the Database Service can use the correct STS endpoint.

Generate a token

For users with a lot of infrastructure in AWS, or who might create or recreate many instances, consider alternative methods for joining new EC2 instances running Teleport:

The Database Service requires a valid auth token to connect to the cluster. Generate one by running the following command against your Teleport Auth Service and save it in /tmp/token on the node that will run the Database Service:

tctl tokens add --type=db

Use the token provided by the output of this command in the next step.

Install and start Teleport

Install Teleport on the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service. See our Installation page for options besides Linux servers.

Install Teleport on your Linux server:

  1. Assign edition to one of the following, depending on your Teleport edition:

    EditionValue
    Teleport Enterprise Cloudcloud
    Teleport Enterprise (Self-Hosted)enterprise
    Teleport Community Editionoss

  2. Get the version of Teleport to install. If you have automatic agent updates enabled in your cluster, query the latest Teleport version that is compatible with the updater:

    TELEPORT_DOMAIN=example.teleport.com
    TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/automaticupgrades/channel/default/version | sed 's/v//')"

    Otherwise, get the version of your Teleport cluster:

    TELEPORT_DOMAIN=example.teleport.com
    TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/ping | jq -r '.server_version')"

  3. Install Teleport on your Linux server:

    curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s ${TELEPORT_VERSION} edition

    The installation script detects the package manager on your Linux server and uses it to install Teleport binaries. To customize your installation, learn about the Teleport package repositories in the installation guide.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, start Teleport with the appropriate configuration.

Note that a single Teleport process can run multiple different services, for example multiple Database Service agents as well as the SSH Service or Application Service. The step below will overwrite an existing configuration file, so if you're running multiple services add --output=stdout to print the config in your terminal, and manually adjust /etc/teleport.yaml.

Generate a configuration file at /etc/teleport.yaml for the Database Service. Set the --proxy command-line option to the address for your Teleport cluster and database parameters to your AWS environment.

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=teleport.example.com:443 \   --name=example-opensearch \   --protocol=opensearch \   --uri=opensearch-uri:443 \   --aws-account-id=abcd1234-this-is-an-example  \   --labels=env=dev

Configure the Teleport Database Service to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. The instructions depend on how you installed the Teleport Database Service.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, enable and start Teleport:

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, create a systemd service configuration for Teleport, enable the Teleport service, and start Teleport:

sudo teleport install systemd -o /etc/systemd/system/teleport.service
sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of the Teleport Database Service with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Modify your Teleport Database Service static configuration file:

db_service:
  enabled: "yes"
  databases:
  - name: example-opensearch
    aws:
      account_id: "abcd1234-this-is-an-example"
    protocol: opensearch
    uri: opensearch-uri:443
    static_labels:
      env: dev

Restart the Teleport Database Service for the configuration file changes to take effect.

Create a dynamic database resource to dynamically register an AWS database in an external account and proxy connections to it.

kind: db
version: v3
metadata:
  name: "example-opensearch"
  description: "Example dynamic database resource"
  labels:
    env: "dev"
spec:
  protocol: "opensearch"
  uri: opensearch-uri:443
  aws:
    account_id: "abcd1234-this-is-an-example"

Save the configuration to a file like database.yaml and create it with tctl:

tctl create database.yaml

For more information about database registration using dynamic database resources, see: Dynamic Registration.

Step 4/4. Connect

Once the Database Service has started and joined the cluster, you can start accessing AWS OpenSearch API:

Create a proxy tunnel:

tsh proxy db --tunnel --port=8000 --db-user=ExampleTeleportOpenSearchRole example-opensearch
Started authenticated tunnel for the OpenSearch database "example-opensearch" in cluster "teleport.example.com" on 127.0.0.1:8000.
Use one of the following commands to connect to the database or to the address above using other database GUI/CLI clients:
  * start interactive session with opensearchsql:
  $ opensearchsql http://localhost:8000
  * run request with opensearch-cli:
  $ opensearch-cli --profile teleport --config /Users/alice/.tsh/teleport.example.dev/example-opensearch/opensearch-cli/8a5ce249.yml curl get --path /
  * run request with curl:
  $ curl http://localhost:8000/

You can now interact with AWS OpenSearch API via local tunnel created by the tsh proxy db command:

curl http://localhost:8000/movies/_search \   -H 'Content-Type: application/json'  \   -d '{ "query": { "match_all": {} } }'

{"took":170,"timed_out":false,"_shards":{"total":5,"successful":5,"skipped":0,"failed":0},"hits":{"total":{"value":1,"relation":"eq"},"max_score":1.0,"hits":[{"_index":"movies","_id":"1","_score":1.0,"_source":{"director": "Burton, Tim", "genre": ["Comedy","Sci-Fi"], "year": 1996, "actor": ["Jack Nicholson","Pierce Brosnan","Sarah Jessica Parker"], "title": "Mars Attacks!"}}]}}

Interactive session can be started using the tsh db connect command, which invokes the opensearchsql binary with interactive mode under the hood:

tsh db connect example-opensearch --db-user=ExampleTeleportOpenSearchRole
____                  _____                      __
/ __ \____  ___  ____ / ___/___  ____ ___________/ /_
/ / / / __ \/ _ \/ __ \\__ \/ _ \/ __ `/ ___/ ___/ __ \
/ /_/ / /_/ /  __/ / / /__/ /  __/ /_/ / /  / /__/ / / /
\____/ .___/\___/_/ /_/____/\___/\__,_/_/   \___/_/ /_/
/_/
Server: OpenSearch 2.5.0
CLI Version: 1.0.0
Endpoint: http://localhost:56766
Query Language: sql
opensearchsql> select * from movies;
fetched rows / total rows = 1/1
+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+-------------+
| actor          | genre   | title         | year   | director    |
|----------------+---------+---------------+--------+-------------|
| Jack Nicholson | Comedy  | Mars Attacks! | 1996   | Burton, Tim |
+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+-------------+
opensearchsql>