authorization.rst

Authorization

Authorization is used to limit access to Alerta API resources. The authorization model is based on Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) which assigns permissions to functional roles and then users are assigned to one or more of those roles.

This "role-based access" allows for fine-grained control over exactly what resources are accessible to which users and exactly what type of access is allowed -- in a way that is scalable.

For example, to create a new alert the sender will need to be assigned to at least one role with write:alerts permissions. If the sender is not a member of a role with those permisssions then the request will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden response code.

Flat RBAC

Alerta implements the "flat" RBAC model as defined by NIST (aka. "Core RBAC") and as such does not support any form of role hierarchy where roles can inherit other roles.

Flat RBAC has the following features:

• users acquire permissions through roles
• must support many-to-many user-role assignment
• must support many-to-many permission-role assignment
• must support user-role assignment review
• users can use permissions of multiple roles simultaneously

Note

All access is through roles. Permissions can not be assigned directly to users. The only exception to this is the ADMIN_USERS setting which overrides all other roles a user might belong to.

Configuration

There are two ways to configure role-based access; default and custom configuration.

Default Authorization

If :ref:`authentication <authentication>` is enabled then the default authorization is used which defines two roles:

• user role - everyone is a "user" unless listed in the ADMIN_USERS setting. (default scopes are read and write)
• admin role - only admins can delete alerts and heartbeats, create users etc. (default scope is simply admin, however that implicitly includes read and write)

Note

The user and admin roles are protected preventing them from being deleted and preventing new roles from being created with the same names. The scopes associated with the default user role are managed using the USER_DEFAULT_SCOPES setting in the API :ref:`server settings <auth_config>`. All other roles are managed via the web console or alerta CLI.

Custom Authorization

To use custom authorization simply define one or more permission-scope lookups.

As an "admin" user go to Configuration -> Permissions and add a new role with the required scopes (see below for list of valid scopes). Those roles should match the roles, groups or organisations associated with users for the configured Authentication provider.

Tip

It is encouraged to employ the principle of least privilege when creating roles. That is, do not give to a user any more privilege than is necessary to perform their job function.

Scopes and Permissions

Use these scopes to request access to API resources.

Scope	Permissions
read	Grants read-only access to all scopes.
write	Grants read/write access to all scopes.
admin	Grants admin, read, write and delete access to all scopes.
read:alerts	Read-only access to alerts.
write:alerts	Grants read/write access to alerts.
delete:alerts (*)	Required to delete alerts, unless have admin access.
admin:alerts	Grants read/write to alerts for any customer.
read:blackouts	Grants read-only access to blackouts.
write:blackouts	Grants read/write access to blackouts.
admin:blackouts	Grants read/write access to blackouts for any customer.
read:heartbeats	Read-only access to heartbeats.
write:heartbeats	Grants read/write access to heartbeats.
admin:heartbeats	Grants read/write access to heartbeats for any customer.
write:users	Grant write access to users.
admin:users	Fully manage users.
read:perms	Grants read-only access to permissions and scopes.
admin:perms	Grants read, write and delete access to permissions.
read:customers	Grants read-only access to customers.
admin:customers	Fully manage customers.
read:keys	List and view API keys.
write:keys	Create, list and view API keys.
admin:keys	Fully manage API keys for any customer.
write:webhooks	Grants write access to webhooks.
read:oembed	Grants read-only to oembed endpoints.
read:management	Grants read-only access to management endpoints.
admin:management	Fully manage management endpoints.
read:userinfo	Grants read-only access to userinfo.

Note

write implicitly includes read, and admin implicitly includes read and write.

delete:alerts only required to delete alerts if the DELETE_SCOPES setting is enabled.

Audit Log

An audit trail can be enabled to keep track of changes to Alerta.

Every audit event will have an audit id, @timestamp, event, category, message, user, resource, request and extra elements. The extra element may include relevant data depending on the type of event.

Example Audit Event

{
  "id": "c87210da-3cfb-4cbd-b8ec-4fe9ed39aeef",
  "@timestamp": "2018-11-10T21:36:23.946Z",
  "event": "apikey-deleted",
  "category": "admin",
  "message": "",
  "user": {
    "id": "satterly",
    "customers": [],
    "scopes": [
      "admin",
      "read",
      "write"
    ]
  },
  "resource": {
    "id": "dc0b5a62-015b-4ba3-965e-012ca2e4db9b",
    "type": "apikey"
  },
  "request": {
    "endpoint": "api.delete_key",
    "method": "DELETE",
    "url": "http://localhost:8080/key/dc0b5a62-015b-4ba3-965e-012ca2e4db9b",
    "args": {},
    "data": "",
    "ipAddress": "127.0.0.1"
  },
  "extra": {}
}

Audit events can be logged locally to the standard application log (which could also help with general debugging) or forwarded to a HTTP endpoint using a POST.

Example Loggly configuration

The following example configuration can be used to log all admin, write and auth requests to the Flask application log file and forward the events to the Loggly "logging-as-a-service" endpoint, replacing TOKEN in the Loggly URL with your customer token.

AUDIT_TRAIL = ['admin', 'write', 'auth']
AUDIT_LOG = True  # log to Flask application logger
AUDIT_URL='http://logs-01.loggly.com/inputs/TOKEN/tag/http/'