openstack/ironic
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fae3493ed1
ironic/doc/source/deploy/security.rst
Ruby Loo ab8e689d33 minor changes to security documentation 
This contains some minor changes to the security documentation:
- replace 'ironic' with 'the Bare Metal service' (as per documentation
  guidelines
- fixes a few grammatical issues
- removes reference to "clean_nodes" configuration option since it
  has been deleted in Newton
- clarifies that [deploy]/erase_devices_priority cannot be 0 for
  erasing of devices to happen
- added links
- additional references shows reference descriptions instead of the links

Change-Id: I11df3bde9eff4b7f109bee6b9d0058e325b67027
2016-05-25 10:08:08 -04:00

3.2 KiB
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Security

Overview

While the Bare Metal service is intended to be a secure application, it is important to understand what it does and does not cover today.

Deployers must properly evaluate their use case and take the appropriate actions to secure their environment appropriately. This document is intended to provide an overview of what risks an operator of the Bare Metal service should be aware of. It is not intended as a How-To guide for securing a data center or an OpenStack deployment.

Firmware security

When the Bare Metal service deploys an operating system image to a server, that image is run natively on the server without virtualization. Any user with administrative access to the deployed instance has administrative access to the underlying hardware.

Most servers' default settings do not prevent a privileged local user from gaining direct access to hardware devices. Such a user could modify device or firmware settings, and potentially flash new firmware to the device, before deleting their instance and allowing the server to be allocated to another user.

If the [conductor]/automated_clean configuration option is enabled (and the [deploy]/erase_devices_priority configuration option is not zero), the Bare Metal service will securely erase all local disk devices within a machine during instance deletion. However, the service does not ship with any code that will validate the integrity of, or make any modifications to, system or device firmware or firmware settings.

Operators are encouraged to write their own hardware manager plugins for the ironic-python-agent ramdisk. This should include custom clean steps that would be run during the automated cleaning process, as part of Node de-provisioning. The clean steps would perform the specific actions necessary within that environment to ensure the integrity of each server's firmware.

Ideally, an operator would work with their hardware vendor to ensure that proper firmware security measures are put in place ahead of time. This could include:

  • installing signed firmware for BIOS and peripheral devices
  • using a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) to validate signatures at boot time
  • booting machines in UEFI Secure Boot mode, rather than BIOS mode, to validate kernel signatures
  • disabling local (in-band) access from the host OS to the management controller (BMC)
  • disabling modifications to boot settings from the host OS
Additional references: