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Version: 14.x

Discover AWS Access Patterns with Teleport Access Graph

Teleport Access Graph offers insights into access patterns within your AWS account. By scanning IAM permissions, users, groups, resources, and identities, it provides a visual representation and aids in enhancing the permission model within your AWS environment. This functionality enables you to address queries such as:

  • What resources are accessible to AWS users and roles?
  • Which resources can be reached via identities associated with EC2 instances?
  • What AWS resources can Teleport users access when connecting to EC2 nodes?

Utilizing the Access Graph to analyze IAM permissions within an AWS account necessitates the setup of the Teleport Access Graph (TAG) service, a Discovery Service, and integration with your AWS account.

Teleport Access Graph is a feature of the Teleport Policy product that is only available to Teleport Enterprise customers.

After logging in to the Teleport UI, go to the Management tab. If enabled, Access Graph options can be found under the Permission Management section.

How TAG discovers AWS access patterns​

Access Graph discovers AWS access patterns, synchronizes various AWS resources, including IAM Policies, Groups, Users, User Groups, EC2 instances, EKS clusters, and RDS databases. These resources are then visualized using the graph representation detailed in the Teleport Policy usage page.

The importing process involves two primary steps:

Polling Cloud APIs​

The Teleport Discovery Service continuously scans the configured AWS accounts. At intervals of 15 minutes, it retrieves the following resources from your AWS account:

  • Users
  • Groups
  • User Groups
  • IAM Roles
  • IAM Policies
  • EC2 Instances
  • EKS Clusters
  • RDS Databases
  • S3 Buckets

Once all the necessary resources are fetched, the Teleport Discovery Service pushes them to the Teleport Access Graph (TAG) service, ensuring that the Access Graph remains updated with the latest information from your AWS environment.

Importing resources​

Teleport Access Graph delves into the IAM policies, identities, and resources retrieved from your AWS account, crafting a graphical representation thereof.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport Enterprise cluster v14.3.9/v15.2.0 or later.
  • For self-hosted clusters, an updated license.pem with Teleport Policy enabled.
  • For self-hosted clusters, a running Access Graph node v1.17.0 or later. Check Access Graph page for details on how to set up Access Graph.
  • The node running the Access Graph service must be reachable from Teleport Auth Service and Discovery Service.

Step 1/2. Configure Discovery Service (Self-hosted only)​

warning

If you have a Teleport Cloud cluster, you can disregard this step, as Teleport Cloud already operates a properly configured Discovery Service within your cluster.

To activate the Teleport Discovery Service, add the provided snippet to your Auth Service configuration. This service monitors dynamic discovery_config resources that are set up with the discovery_group matching access-graph-disc.

discovery_service:
  enabled: true
  discovery_group: access-graph-disc

Notice that if you already operate a Discovery Service within your cluster, it's possible to reuse it as long as the following requirements are met:

  • On step 2, you match the discovery_group with the existing Discovery Service's discovery_group.
  • Access Graph service is reachable from the machine where Discovery Service runs.

Step 2/2. Set up Access Graph AWS Sync​

To initiate the setup wizard for configuring AWS Sync, access the Teleport UI, navigate to the Management tab, and choose the Access Graph option within the Permission Management section.

If both Teleport and Access Graph support AWS sync, you'll notice a new button adjacent to the Access Graph navigation bar labeled Analyze AWS IAM policies with Access Graph.

You'll be prompted to create a new Teleport AWS integration if you haven't configured one already. Alternatively, you can opt for a previously established integration.

Upon selecting or creating the integration, you'll be instructed to execute a bash script within your AWS Cloud Shell to configure the necessary permissions.

List of IAM Policies required for AWS Sync

The policy is designed with a set of read-only actions, enabling Teleport to access and retrieve information from resources within your AWS Account.

The IAM policy includes the following directives:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeImages",
        "ec2:DescribeTags",
        "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
        "ec2:DescribeKeyPairs",

        "eks:ListClusters",
        "eks:DescribeCluster",
        "eks:ListAccessEntries",
        "eks:ListAccessPolicies",
        "eks:ListAssociatedAccessPolicies",
        "eks:DescribeAccessEntry",

        "rds:DescribeDBInstances",
        "rds:DescribeDBClusters",
        "rds:ListTagsForResource",
        "rds:DescribeDBProxies",

        "dynamodb:ListTables",
        "dynamodb:DescribeTable",

        "redshift:DescribeClusters",
        "redshift:Describe*",

        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
        "s3:GetBucketPolicy",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",

        "iam:ListUsers",
        "iam:GetUser",
        "iam:ListRoles",
        "iam:ListGroups",
        "iam:ListPolicies",
        "iam:ListGroupsForUser",
        "iam:ListInstanceProfiles",
        "iam:ListUserPolicies",
        "iam:GetUserPolicy",
        "iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies",
        "iam:ListGroupPolicies",
        "iam:GetGroupPolicy",
        "iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies",
        "iam:GetPolicy",
        "iam:GetPolicyVersion",
        "iam:ListRolePolicies",
        "iam:ListAttachedRolePolicies",
        "iam:GetRolePolicy",
        "iam:ListSAMLProviders",
        "iam:GetSAMLProvider",
        "iam:ListOpenIDConnectProviders",
        "iam:GetOpenIDConnectProvider"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Once the IAM Policy has been successfully linked to the IAM role utilized by Teleport, you'll be prompted to specify the regions from which Teleport should import resources. This selection solely pertains to regional resources and does not impact global resources such as S3 Buckets, IAM Policies, or IAM Users.

If you're operating a self-hosted cluster, you'll additionally need to provide input for the discovery_group configured during Step 1.