Teleport
Machine ID with Application Access
- Edge version
- Version 17.x
- Version 16.x
- Version 15.x
- Older Versions
Teleport protects and controls access to HTTP and TCP applications. Machine ID can be used to grant machines secure, short-lived access to these applications.
In this guide, you will configure tbot
to produce credentials that can be
used to access an application enrolled in your Teleport cluster.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster version 16.4.10 or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.
-
The
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool.Visit Installation for instructions on downloading
tctl
andtsh
.
- If you have not already connected your application to Teleport, follow the Application Access Getting Started Guide.
- To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with
tsh login
, then verify that you can runtctl
commands using your current credentials. For example:If you can connect to the cluster and run thetsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]tctl statusCluster teleport.example.com
Version 16.4.10
CA pin sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
tctl status
command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequenttctl
commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also runtctl
commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions. tbot
must already be installed and configured on the machine that will access applications. For more information, see the deployment guides.
Step 1/3. Configure RBAC
First, Teleport should be configured to allow the credentials produced by tbot
to be used to connect to an Application. This is done by creating a role that
grants the necessary permissions and then assigning this role to a Bot.
Create a file called role.yaml
with the following content:
kind: role
version: v6
metadata:
name: example-role
spec:
allow:
# Grants access to all applications.
app_labels:
'*': '*'
Replace example-role
with a descriptive name related to your use case.
This grants access to all applications. In production environments you should modify these labels to grant access to only the applications that the machine will need access to.
Use tctl create -f ./role.yaml
to create the role.
Now, use tctl bots update
to add the role to the Bot. Replace example
with the name of the Bot you created in the deployment guide and example-role
with the name of the role you just created:
tctl bots update example --add-roles example-role
Step 2/3. Configure tbot
There are two implementation options available when using tbot
to grant
a client access to an application. The option you choose will depend on your
specific needs.
The first option is the application-tunnel
service. This operates a local
proxy that your client can connect to. The service will automatically attach
the credentials to the connection, meaning that the client does not need to
support client certificates. However, this does mean that the tbot
process
must be running for the client to access the application.
The second option is the application
output. This will write TLS credentials
to a destination where your client will read them from. The client must support
client certificates and reloading them from disk when they are renewed. In
addition, this option is not compatible with a TLS-terminating load-balancer
between the client and the Teleport Proxy service. Unlike the
application-tunnel
, the tbot
process does not need to be running for the
client to access the application - this can be ideal for CI/CD pipelines.
If you aren't sure which to use, we recommend starting with the
application-tunnel
service as this is compatible with more clients.
To configure the application-tunnel
service, first determine where you want
the listener to bind to. As any client that can connect to the service listener
will be able to access the application, it is recommended to bind to the
loopback interface (e.g 127.0.0.1
) as this will prevent access from other
hosts.
Modify your tbot
configuration to add an application-tunnel
service:
services:
- type: application-tunnel
app_name: dumper
listen: tcp://127.0.0.1:1234
Replace:
dumper
with the name of the application you registered in Teleport.listen
with the address and port you wish the service to bind to.
Restart tbot
to apply the new configuration.
Outputs must be configured with a destination. In this example, the directory
destination will be used. This will write artifacts to a specified directory on
disk. Ensure that this directory can be written to by the Linux user that
tbot
runs as, and that it can be read by the Linux user that will be accessing
applications.
Modify your tbot
configuration to add an application
output:
outputs:
- type: application
# specify the name of the application you wish the credentials to grant
# access to.
app_name: dumper
destination:
type: directory
# For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
# You may wish to customize this. Multiple outputs cannot share the same
# destination.
path: /opt/machine-id
Ensure you replace dumper
with the name of the application you registered in
Teleport.
If operating tbot
as a background service, restart it. If running tbot
in
one-shot mode, it must be executed before you attempt to use the credentials.
Step 3/3. Connect to your web application with the Machine ID identity
Once the application-tunnel
service has been configured, you can connect to
the application using the listen address you specified.
For example, to access the application using curl
:
curl http://127.0.0.1:1234/
Once tbot
has been run, credentials will be output to the directory specified
in the destination. Using the example of /opt/machine-id
:
/opt/machine-id/tlscert
: the client TLS certificate/opt/machine-id/key
: the TLS certificate's private key
You may use these credentials with any client application that supports them.
The Teleport Proxy makes apps available via subdomains of its public web
address. Given the debug application named dumper
and a Teleport Proxy at
https://example.teleport.sh:443
, the app may be accessed at
https://dumper.example.teleport.sh:443
.
For example, to access the application using curl
:
curl \--cert /opt/machine-id/tlscert \--key /opt/machine-id/key \https://dumper.example.teleport.sh/
No CA certificate needs to be specified so long as your Teleport Proxy is configured with a valid wildcard CA from Let's Encrypt or another public certificate authority.
Note that if the certificates are invalid or otherwise misconfigured, clients will be redirected to the Teleport login page when attempting to access the app.
Troubleshooting
Client application requires certificates with standard extensions
If your automated service requires TLS certificates with a specific file
extension, you may also enable the specific_tls_naming
option for the output:
outputs:
- type: application
destination:
type: directory
path: /opt/machine-id
app_name: grafana-example
specific_tls_naming: true
This will generate tls.crt
and tls.key
inside /opt/machine-id
with identical content to the certificate files listed above.
Clients are redirected to the Teleport login page
As with human users, scripted clients will be redirected to the Teleport login page when attempting to access an app through the Teleport Proxy Service without valid credentials.
Ensure the bot's certificates have not expired and that the client application has been configured to use both the client certificate and key.
Next steps
- Review the Access Controls Reference to learn about restricting which Applications and other Teleport resources your bot may access.
- Configure JWTs for your Application to remove the need for additional login credentials.
- Read the configuration reference to explore all the available configuration options.