two-factor auth for Fedora in "the cloud?"

[Robert Jenkins]

Dear all,

As rightly pointed out, there is a distinction between securing access to
your cloud servers and access to cloud infrastructure management tools.
Actually securing access to infrastructure management tools is vital given
the power they have over cloud infrastructure in a way you would rarely see
for management tools on dedicated hardware. For example deleting whole
drives and servers!

For example we offer two-factor authentication to our web console (using an
SMS delivered code for the second stage) which works very well and is easily
implemented. In our case root access is retained by the customer and we
don't have access to it, as such securing the cloud server falls under the
full control of the customer. Implementing stronger authentication on the
cloud server then becomes a matter of the networking and control granted by
the cloud vendor over the cloud server. In our case its open networking and
full control so you set-up whatever authentication you need in the same way
as on dedicated hardware. On other platforms you may need to work around
their firewalls and installation restrictions to get things working within
the servers.

We wrote some blog posts on cloud security in general which may be of
interest to subscribers of this list:
Securing the network in the cloud:
http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/blog/2010/09/13/10-security-in-a-public-iaas-cloud-networking
Securing access to cloud servers:
http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/blog/2010/09/19/11-security-in-the-cloud-access-to-cloud-servers
Securing data storage:
http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/blog/2010/12/04/15-security-in-the-cloud-data-storage

Kind regards,

Robert

-- 
Robert Jenkins
Co-Founder
CloudSigma AG
E: robert at cloudsigma.com
T: www.twitter.com/CloudSigma
W: www.cloudsigma.com

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Brian LaMere <brian at cukerinteractive.com>wrote:

> Yeah, I guess it's not really cloud specific, other than the idea that it's
> for remote systems that are in networks I don't control, and it needs to be
> a setup that is easily replicated/deployed...you know, like an AWS instance,
> or such ;)
>
> I had looked around for a pam module for the google auth not terribly long
> ago and didn't find anything that was outside of alpha-level stuff.
>
> Brian
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Jeremy Katz <katzj at fedoraproject.org>wrote:
>
>> Right, the AWS two factor auth is just for access to their stuff and
>> not at all related to instance auth.
>>
>> You basically want anything that can be used for two factor auth in
>> Fedora?  The Yubikeys should work (http://www.yubico.com/yubikey) and
>> I also vaguely remember that Google released a library with a pam
>> module for their two factor auth a few months ago although I'm not
>> finding a link to it in a quick check
>>
>> - Jeremy
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Brian LaMere
>> <brian at cukerinteractive.com> wrote:
>> > Anyone have luck setting up two-factor auth for Fedora in "the Cloud" -
>> > preferably, at AWS?  Yes, I got one of the token generators discussed
>> > at http://aws.amazon.com/mfa/
>> > However, those only appear to help with authentication to (per the faq):
>> >
>> > Secure pages on the AWS Portal (http://aws.amazon.com)
>> > AWS Management Console (https://console.aws.amazon.com)
>> >
>> > What if I need to multi-factor auth to the instances themselves?  Anyone
>> > know if there's a service out there that does this for Fedora (or
>> RedHat,
>> > which can easily be made to work for...) instances in the "cloud?"
>> > I'm used to doing this locally and then making the remote systems only
>> allow
>> > access via a limited number of machines (which themselves do 2-factor).
>>  I'm
>> > now in a situation though with every workstation being outside the trust
>> > zone completely, VPN not being something that could change that (too
>> many
>> > details...), and thus needing to accomplish the 2-factor in the cloud
>> > itself.  Most of the results from "two factor authentication cloud" I
>> get
>> > are about cloud-based providers authenticating the local
>> machines...versus
>> > what I need, which is a service that I can auth cloud-based machines
>> against
>> > for the second factor.  I know of many industries that would *have* to
>> have
>> > a 2-factor solution to use cloud instances, so surely my google-fu is
>> just
>> > not working...anyone gone down this road themselves yet?
>> > Brian
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>> >
>> >
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