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Kafka SPIFFE Principal Builder

A custom KafkaPrincipalBuilder implementation for Apache Kafka. This class and documentation deals only with SslAuthenticationContext, we do not support any other context at the moment (Kerberos, SASL, Oauth)

Default behavior

The default DefaultKafkaPrincipalBuilder class that comes with Apache Kafka builds a principal name according to the x509 Subject in the SSL certificate. Since there is no logic that deals with Subject Alternative Name, this approach cannot handle a SPIFFE ID.

New behavior

The principal builder first looks for any valid SPIFFE ID in the certificate, if found, the KafkaPrincipal that will be returned would be seen by an ACL Authorizer as SPIFFE:spiffe://some.spiffe.id.uri. If that fails, a normal usage of the Subject will used with a normal USER:CN=...

Installation

Prerequesites

  • You'll need a Kafka installation, for further instructions check the Apache Kafka page.
  • You'll need to employ Maven, for installation instructions check the Maven official page.
  • You'll need a deployed SPIRE Server and Agent, for installation instructions check Spiffe pages on the SPIRE Agent and the SPIRE Server

Build the project

mvn package

This creates the file "target/kafka-spiffe-principal-X.X.X.jar" where "X.X.X" will be the actual version. Later we'll need to add this file to the JVM classpath.

Generate SVIDs for Kafka Broker Server

  • OBS: The CN/SAN in the server certificate must match the machine's hostname. Using the -dns flag as seen in the command mint below solves the problem.
cd /path/to/spire/

mkdir -p ./certs-server/

bin/spire-server x509 mint \
  -write certs-server -ttl 48h \
  -spiffeID "spiffe://example.org/kafka-server" \
  -dns <HOSTNAME>

mv certs-server/bundle.pem certs-server/ca-cert.pem
mv certs-server/key.pem certs-server/kafka-server-key.pem
mv certs-server/svid.pem certs-server/kafka-server-cert.pem

# Move the files to the root of the kafka installation
cp certs-server/* /path/to/kafka/

Configure Kafka

Set JVM classpath

Right before raising the Kafka broker run the following command in the same terminal:

export CLASSPATH=/path/to/kafka-spiffe-principal-X.X.X.jar
  • OBS: Using /etc/environment or sourcing files to provide the environment variable CLASSPATH provided mixed result as far as the visibility to Kafka is concerned. We recommend using the export command.

Create keystore and trustore

  • OBS: Throughout this section and below we use the placeholder "123456" for the password of the the keystores and truststores, replace this with your actual password in a meaningful deployment.
cd /path/to/kafka/

# Create truststore with CA file
keytool \
  -keystore truststore.jks \
  -alias CARoot \
  -importcert -file ca-cert.pem \
  -storepass 123456 \
  -noprompt

# Convert SERVER private key and certificate files into a PKCS12 file.
openssl pkcs12 \
  -export -in kafka-server-cert.pem \
  -inkey kafka-server-key.pem \
  -out kafka-server.p12 \
  -name kafka \
  -CAfile ca-cert.pem \
  -caname CARoot \
  -password pass:123456

# Import the SERVER PKCS12 file into the broker keystore
keytool \
  -importkeystore \
  -deststorepass 123456 \
  -destkeypass 123456 \
  -destkeystore broker.keystore.jks \
  -srckeystore kafka-server.p12 \
  -srcstoretype PKCS12 -srcstorepass 123456 -noprompt

Kafka properties

The following configuration refers to a Kafka broker wth a TLS listener, change it as you need it. The placeholder <HOSTNAME> refers to the name of the machine hosting the Kafka Broker Server.

broker.id=0
port=9092
zookeeper.connect=localhost:2181
advertised.port = 9092
advertised.host.name=<HOSTNAME> 
offsets.topic.replication.factor=1

security.protocol=SSL
ssl.client.auth=required
security.inter.broker.protocol = SSL
ssl.enabled.protocols=TLSv1.2,TLSv1.1,TLSv1
listeners=SSL://<HOSTNAME>:9092
advertised.listeners=SSL://<HOSTNAME>:9092

# Stores
ssl.truststore.location=truststore.jks
ssl.truststore.password=123456
ssl.keystore.location=broker.keystore.jks
ssl.keystore.password=123456

# ACL related
authorizer.class.name=kafka.security.authorizer.AclAuthorizer
principal.builder.class=io.okro.kafka.SpiffePrincipalBuilder

# Disable host name checking
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=
  • OBS: If you choose to not disable host name checking you'll need to add the hostname to the CN/SAN of both the client and server certificates provided to the Kafka deployment.
  • OBS: Whether or not you disable host name checking, we must add the hostname to the CN/SAN of the server certificate. The commands in the respective already do this.

Update hosts

Add the line <KAFKA-HOST-IP> <HOSTNAME> to the file /etc/hosts of the machine that contains the kafka server and the kafka client. Where refers to the IP address of said machine.

Grant rights to the Kafka Broker via ACL

By default if there's no ACL for a given resource it can't be accessed. For this reason, the exception "org.apache.kafka.common.errors.ClusterAuthorizationException" will be raised and mentioned in the file logs/kafka-authorizer.log, in order to solve this problem we must authorize the certificate used by our Kafka Broker Server through an ACL rule.

bin/kafka-acls.sh \
  --authorizer-properties zookeeper.connect=localhost:2181 \
  --cluster '*' --operation 'ClusterAction' \
  --add --allow-principal 'SPIFFE:spiffe://example.org/kafka-server' --allow-host '*'