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Version: 18.x

MFA for Administrative Actions

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Teleport can be configured to require additional multi-factor authentication checks to perform administrative actions through tctl, tsh, the Web UI, Teleport Connect, and any other Teleport client.

Examples of administrative actions include, but are not limited to:

  • Resetting or recovering user accounts
  • Inviting new users
  • Updating cluster configuration resources
  • Modifying access management resources
  • Approving Access Requests
  • Generating new join tokens
  • Impersonation
  • Creating new bots for Machine & Workload Identity

This is an advanced security feature that protects users against compromises of their on-disk Teleport certificates.

warning

When MFA for administrative actions is enabled, user certificates produced with tctl auth sign will no longer be suitable for automation due to the additional MFA checks.

We recommend using Machine & Workload Identity to issue certificates for automated workflows, which uses role impersonation that is not subject to MFA checks.

Certificates produced with tctl auth sign directly on an Auth Service instance using the super-admin role are not subject to MFA checks to support legacy self-hosted setups.

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 and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

    Connecting with TLS routing disabled

    This guide's commands assume your Teleport cluster uses TLS routing (proxy_listener_mode: multiplex), where the tctl and tsh clients reach every Teleport service through the Proxy Service's web address on port 443. If you're not sure whether this applies to your cluster, check with whoever manages it.

    If your cluster uses separate listener ports instead, adjust ports as follows:

    • tsh commands (e.g., tsh login --proxy=...): continue using the Proxy Service web address on port 3080 (or 443 if behind a load balancer). Do not change these to port 3025.

    • Direct tctl or Auth Service API commands: use port 3025 for the Auth Service gRPC listener:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:3025
  • Check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster and verify that you can run tctl and tsh commands using your current credentials.

    1. Assign teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and [email protected] to your Teleport username.

    2. Authenticate to your Teleport cluster. This depends on whether your shell is interactive or not.

      In an interactive shell: Run the following command. By default, this triggers a multi-factor authentication prompt:

      tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=[email protected]
      tctl status
      Cluster  teleport.example.com
      Version  18.10.0
      CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

      On non-interactive environments: If you are running tsh and tctl as an AI agent, in a CI/CD environment, or similar, make sure the TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE environment variable is assigned to a valid file path with credentials for your cluster. tsh and tctl read the file path from the environment variable and do not require a separate authentication step. If there is no identity file available, we recommend that you set up Machine ID to provision one automatically.

      When executing tctl commands with an identity file, you must pass the --auth-server flag to provide the Teleport Auth Service address, which is not included in the identity file. If you provide the Proxy Service address, tctl connects to the Proxy Service, which forwards traffic to and from the Teleport Auth Service. Update 443 to 3025 if you are contacting the Auth Service directly with tctl:

      tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:443

      For tsh commands that read an identity file, you must pass the --proxy flag, which points tsh to the address of the Teleport Proxy Service:

      tsh status --proxy=teleport.example.com

      Ensure client commands can access your identity file. Replace path/to/identity/file with the path to your identity file:

      export TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE="${TELEPORT_IDENTITY_FILE:-path/to/identity/file}"

      Add the --auth-server or --proxy flags to all subsequent tctl and tsh commands.

    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.
  • WebAuthn configured on this cluster
  • Multi-factor authentication hardware device, such as YubiKey or SoloKey
  • A Web browser with WebAuthn support (if using SSH or desktop sessions from the Teleport Web UI).

Require MFA for administrative actions​

MFA for administrative actions is automatically enforced for clusters where WebAuthn is the only form of multi-factor authentication allowed.

note

In a future major version, Teleport may enforce MFA for administrative actions for a wider range of cluster configurations.

Edit the cluster_auth_preference resource:

tctl edit cap

Update the cluster_auth_preference definition to include the following content:

kind: cluster_auth_preference
version: v2
metadata:
  name: cluster-auth-preference
spec:
  type: local
  second_factors: ["webauthn"]
  webauthn:
    rp_id: example.com

Save and exit the file. tctl will update the remote definition:

cluster auth preference has been updated