We have several golden AMIs that teams have built AMIs off of (children), some AMIs are built off of those (grand children), and now we'd like to figure out how to track the decendant to its parent golden AMI. There is a /etc/os-release for the Amazon AMIs which is useful but it makes it harder to find the AMIs in between.
Possible solutions
Tagging of AMIs and tagging of decendent AMIs
This would work but would require this tagging approach for all packer scripts which someone may forget to include.
"tags": {
"source_ami": "{{ .SourceAMI }}",
"source_ami_name": "{{ .SourceAMIName }}",
"source_ami_date": "{{ .SourceAMICreationDate }}"
}
In addition to that, we can also create a cloud custodian policy to deregister any new AMIs (after a specific date) to automatically deregister if it does not contain the above mandated tags.
Another problem with this approach is that sharing these AMIs with other accounts loses tags in those shared accounts. This solution would require either a Lambda or packer post processor that can assume a role in child accounts in order to copy tags of AMIs from the primary build account to the child account.
Manifest json file (example) downloaded to EC2 upon boot
This would not contain the resulting AMI id on the AMI itself since we do not know what the AMI is until it's complete. What we can do instead is use a manifest post processor to output the manifest.json, upload it to a prefix according to its respective AMI e.g. aws s3 cp manifest.json s3://bucket-ami-output/<ami-id>/manifest.json, and then have the EC2 launch use a /etc/rc.local script to hit its metadata to get its AMI, download the respective AMI manifest.json, check for a non-existent /etc/os-<parent-id>.json e.g. /etc/os-0.json. If os-0.json already exists, increment the parent id until one is available. Finally, move the json file to available file on the system.
Or we could create a file that has the source ami instead of the resulting ami. This is possible using a script that hits the metadata endpoint http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ami-id to get the current AMI during the packing process and then dump that information into a /etc/os-0.json file.
I'm leaning to the first approach because it seems much simpler.
Related
So I created encrypted key using ansible-vault create my.key.
Then I use it as var:
my_key: "{{ lookup('file','{{ inventory_dir }}/group_vars/my.key') }}"
And then when running my playbook, like this:
- name: Create My Private Key
ansible.builtin.copy:
content: "{{ secrets.my_key }}"
dest: "{{ secrets_key }}"
no_log: true
It does properly create key on remote host and it is then unencrypted. But I'm thinking if this is the right way to do it? Does it unencrypt at the right time and I am not exposing sensitive data where it should not be?
I thought encrypted variables must also have !vault keyword specified. But if I do this for my my_key, I get this error:
fatal: [v14-test]: FAILED! => {"msg": "input is not vault encrypted data. "}
So this got me worried, that file is unencrypted at the wrong time or maybe message is misleading or something.
Is this the right way to do it? Or I should do it differently?
Firstly, a definitive answer as to whether this approach is appropriate, is directly linked to what you want to achieve from encryption. Therefore all the answers here can do is talk about how Vault works and then you can decide if it is right for your requirements.
Fundamentally what you are doing is a 'correct' usage of Ansible Vault, although I have not previously seen it used in quite this workflow (typically I have seen create used for encrypting YAML files of vars).
Using your method, your secret is turned into ciphertext and stored in my.key (which can be confirmed by using basic text tools such as cat, less or more). You will see the first line of the file, contains a bunch of metadata that allows Ansible to understand the file contents and decrypt on demand.
At runtime, Ansible will then use the password/key for the encrypted file (accessed through a number of methods) to decrypt the file contents into plain text and then store it in the variable my_key for use during the play.
A non-exhaustive list of things to consider when determining if Ansible Vault is the right approach for you:
Ansible Vault encryption is purely designed to protect secrets at rest (i.e. when they are stored on your hard disk)
At run time, the secrets are converted into plain text and treated like any other variable/string data, however the file on disk still contains ciphertext so the plaintext is only accessible within the running Ansible process (i.e. on a multi-user system, at no point can anybody view the plaintext simply by looking inside the my.key file. However, depending on their level of access, skills and what your Ansible tasks are doing, they may be able to access the plaintext from the running process.)
Given inside the process the data is just plain text, it is vulnerable to leakage (for example by writing the contents out into a log file - checkout the Ansible no_log option)
At run time, Ansible needs some way to access the key necessary to decrypt the ciphertext. It provides a variety of methods, including prompting the user, accessing it from a file stored on disk, accessing it from an Env var, using scripts/integrations to pull it from another secrets mgmt tool. Careful thought needs to be given about which option is chosen, relative to what you are looking to achieve from the encryption (e.g. if your goal is to protect your data in the event that your laptop gets stolen, then storing the key in a file on the same system, renders the whole operation pointless). Quite often, with more sophisticated methods, you can still end up in a 'chicken and egg' situation, once more relative to what your goal from using encryption is
I might be talking complete cobblers or be a nefarious individual trying to sow disinformation, so read the docs thoroughly if the value of the secrets if significant to you :)
Unfortunately there is no getting away from generally good security is harder to achieve than the illusion of good security :|
Environment
ASP.NET WebForms app over IIS
Docker container host
AWS ECS hosting platform
Each client hosting its own copy of the app with private database connection string
Background
In the non-docker environment, each copy is a virtual directory under IIS, and thus have their own individual web.config pointing to dedicated databases. The underlying codebase is the same for each client, with no client-specific customization involved. The route becomes / here.
In the docker environment (one container per client), each copy goes over as a central root application.
Challange
Since the root image is going to be the same, how to have the web.config overridden for each client deployment.
We shouldn't create multiple images (one per client) as that will mean having extra deployment jobs and losing out on centralization. The connection strings should ideally be stored in some kind of dictionary storage applicable at ECS level which can provide client-specific values upon loading of corresponding containers.
Presenting the approach we used to solve this issue. Hope it may help others struck in similar cases.
With the problem statement tied to having a single root image and having any customization being applied at runtime, we knew that there needs to be a transformation of web.config at time of loading of the corresponding containers.
The solution was to use a PowerShell script that will read the web.config and get replace the specific values which were having a custom prefix embedded to the key. The values got passed from custom environmental variables within ECS and the web.config also got updated to have the keys with the prefix added.
Now since the docker container can have only a single entry point, a new base image was created which instantiated an IIS server and called a PowerShell script as startup. The called script called this transformation script and then set the ServiceMonitor on the w3cwp.
Thanks a lot for this article https://anthonychu.ca/post/overriding-web-config-settings-environment-variables-containerized-aspnet-apps/
I would use environment variables as the OP suggests for this with a start up transform, however I want to make the point that you do not want sensitive information in ENV variables, like DB passwords, in your ECS task definition.
For that protected information, you should use ECS secrets coupled with Parameter Store in Systems Manager. These values can be stored encrypted in the Parameter Store (using a KMS key) and the ECS Agent will 'inject' them as ENV variables on task startup.
For me, to simplify matters, I simply use secrets for everything although you can choose to only encrypt the sensitive information and leave the others clear.
I dynamically add the secrets for the given application into my task definitions at deploy time by looking up the 'secrets' for the given app by 'namespace' (something that Parameter Store supports). Then, if I need to add a new parameter, I can just add a new secret to the store in the given namespace and re-deploy the app. It will pick up and inject into the task definition any newly defined secrets automatically (or remove ones that have been retired).
Sample ruby code for creating task definition:
params = ssm_client.get_parameters_by_path(path: '/production/my_app/').parameters
secrets = params.map{ |p| { name: p.name.split("/")[-1], value_from: p.arn } }
task_def.container_definitions[0].secrets = secrets
This last transform injects the secrets such that the secret 'name' is the ENV variable name... which ends up looking like this:
"secrets": [
{
"valueFrom": "arn:aws:ssm:us-east-1:578610029524:parameter/production/my_app/DB_HOSTNAME",
"name": "DB_HOSTNAME"
},
{
"valueFrom": "arn:aws:ssm:us-east-1:578610029524:parameter/production/my_app/DB_PASSWORD",
"name": "DB_PASSWORD"
}
You can see there are no values now in the task definition. They are retrieved and injected when ECS starts up your task.
More information:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/specifying-sensitive-data.html
I have a number of files that I need to transfer to specific minion hosts in a secure manner, and I would like to automate that process using Salt. However, I am having trouble figuring out the best means of implementing a host restricted transfer.
The salt fileserver works great for non-host-specific transfers. However, some of the files that I need to transfer are customer specific and so I need to ensure that they are only accessible from specific hosts. Assumedly Pillar would be the ideal candidate for minion specific restrictions, but I am having trouble figuring out a means of specifying file transfers using pillar as the source.
As far as I can tell Pillar only supports SLS based dictionary data, not file transfers. I’ve tried various combinations of file.managed state specifications with paths constructed using various convolutions (including salt://_pillar/xxx), but thus far I have not been able to access anything other than token data defined within an SLS file.
Any suggestions for how to do this? I am assuming that secure file transfers should be a common enough need that there should be a standard means of doing it, as opposed to writing a custom function.
The answer depends on what exactly you're trying to secure. If only a part of the files involved are "sensitive" (for example, passwords in configuration files), you probably want to use a template that pulls the sensitive parts in from pillar:
# /srv/salt/app/files/app.conf.jinja
[global]
user = {{ salt['pillar.get']("app:user") }}
password = {{ salt['pillar.get']("app:password") }}
# ...and so on
For this case you don't need to care if the template itself is accessible to minions.
If the entire file(s) involved are sensitive, then I think you want to set up the file_tree external pillar, and use file.managed with the contents_pillar option. That's not something I've worked with, so I don't have a good example.
Solution Synopsis: Using PILLAR.FILE_TREE
A: On your master, set-up a directory from which you will server the private files (e.g: /srv/salt/private).
B: Beneath that create a “hosts” subdirectory, and then beneath that create a directory for each of the hosts that will have private files.
/srv/salt/private/hosts/hostA
/srv/salt/private/hosts/hostB
… where hostA and hostB are the ids of the target minions.
See the docs if you want to use node-groups instead of host ids.
C: Beneath the host dirs, include any files you want to transfer via pillar.
echo “I am Foo\!” > /srv/salt/private/hosts/hostA/testme
D: In your master config file (e.g: /etc/salt/master), include the following stanza:
ext_pillar:
- file_tree:
root_dir: /srv/salt/private
follow_dir_links: False
keep_newline: True
debug: True
E: Create a salt state file to handle the transfer.
cat > /srv/salt/files/base/foo.sls << END
/tmp/pt_test:
file.managed:
- contents_pillar: testme
END
F: Run pillar refresh, and then run your state command:
salt hostA state.apply foo
Following the last step, hostA should have a file named /tmp/pt_test that contains the text “I am Foo!”.
I am creating cloud formation script, which will have ELB. In Auto Scaling launch configuration, I want to add encrypted EBS volume. Couldn't find an encrypted property withing blockdevicemapping. I need to encrypt volume. How can I attach an encrypted EBS volume to an EC2 instance through auto scaling launch configuration?
There is no such property for some strange reason when using launch configurations, however it is there when using blockdevicemappings with simple EC2 instances. See
launchconfig-blockdev vs ec2-blockdev
So you'll either have to use simple instances instead of autoscaling groups, or you can try this workaround:
SnapshotIds are accepted for launchconf blockdev too, and as stated here "Snapshots that are taken from encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted. Volumes that are created from encrypted snapshots are also automatically encrypted."
Create a snapshot from an encrypted empty EBS volume and use it in the CloudFormation template. If your template should work in multiple regions then of course you'll have to create the snapshot in every region and use a Mapping in the template.
As Marton says, there is no such property (unfortunately it often takes a while for CloudFormation to catch up with the main APIs).
Normally each encrypted volume you create will have a different key. However, when using the workaround mentioned (of using an encrypted snapshot) the resulting encrypted volumes will inherit the encryption key from the snapshot and all be the same.
From a cryptography point of view this is a bad idea as you potentially have multiple, different volumes and snapshots with the same key. If an attacker has access to all of these then he can potentially use differences to infer information about the key more easily.
An alternative is to write a script that creates and attaches a new encrypted volume at the boot time of a instance. This is fairly easy to do. You'll need to give the instance permissions to create and attach volumes and either have installed the AWS CLI tool or a library for your preferred scripting language. One you have that you can, from the instance that is booting, create a volume and attach it.
You can find a starting point for such a script here: https://github.com/guardian/machine-images/blob/master/packer/resources/features/ebs/add-encrypted.sh
There is an AutoScaling EBS Block Device type which provides the "Encrypted" option:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-as-launchconfig-blockdev-template.html
Hope this helps!
AWS recently announced Default Encryption for New EBS Volumes. You can enable this per region via
EC2 Console > Settings > Always encrypt new EBS volumes
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-opt-in-to-default-encryption-for-new-ebs-volumes/
I have recently created a very small Google Compute Engine instance, naively thinking it's one of those easily scalable things Google people keep raving about.
I used the quick deployment feature of Wordpress and it all installed itself nicely, so I started configuring and adding data etc.
However, I then found out that I can't scale an existing instance (i.e. it won't allow me to change the instance type to a bigger one. I don't get why not, but there you go.), so it looks like I need to find a way to migrate my Wordpress installation to a new instance.
Will I simply be able to create a new instance and point it at the persistent disk my small instance currently uses, et voila, Bob's your uncle?
Or do I need to manually get the files and MySql data off the first instance and re-import into an empty new instance?
What's the easiest way?
Any advise or helpful links would be appreciated.
Thanks.
P.S.: Btw, should I try to use the Google Cloud SQL store instead of a local MySql installation?
In order to upgrade your VM:
access the VM's settings in the Developers Console (your project -> Compute -> Compute Engine -> VM instances -> click on the VM's name)
Scroll down to the "Disks" section, and un-check "Delete boot disk when instance is deleted"
Delete the VM in question. Take note that the disk, named after the instance, will remain.
Create a new VM, selecting "Existing disk" under Boot disk - Boot source. In the next box down, select the disk from point 3 above, as well as a bigger machine type.
The resulting new instance will use the existing disk from the old one, with improved hardware / performance.
As for using Cloud SQL in lieu of a VM-installed database, it's perfectly feasible, and allows to adjust the Cloud SQL instance to match your actual use. A few consideration when setting up this kind of instance:
limit the IPs allowed to connect to your Cloud SQL instance to your frontend's IP, and perhaps the workstation's IP or subnet from which you maintain the database out of.
configure Cloud SQL to use SSL certificates.
Sammy's answer covers the important stuff I just wanted to clarify how your files are arranged on the two disks that are attached to your instance:
The data disk contains /var/www/ which is all of the wordpress files. It's mounted on the instance at /wordpress
The boot disk contains everything else, including the MySQL database that was created for the Wordpress installation.