My main objective in bootstrapping and utilizing OpenZiti is to achieve security at the application level. I wanted to try something new beyond the classic VPNs available today, such as ZeroTier, Tailscale, Endpoint Security, or Fortinet VPN. In many organizations I have worked with, these VPN solutions seemed half-baked. It always felt strange when my connectivity allowed me to reach highly sensitive systems like ESB or DWH. Of course, I shouldn't have had access to these systems, but I did. This meant that a potential intruder could have had access too! Hence, my search led me to the great find of OpenZiti.
I struggled to understand OpenZiti for quite some time because it was a new field for me (ZeroTrust). The PKI in OpenZiti, in particular, looked daunting and complicated. The tutorial didn't help much as it used the Ziti sub-app to create the entire PKI, which was not transparent to me as a learner. However, the OpenZiti Forum helped a lot in understanding how PKI works in conjunction with the fabric. I started a few topics that you can find here [1] [2] [3].
From these discussions, I understood one vital thing: if I had not created the entire PKI manually, it would have been hard to know exactly how everything works together.
So, I started by making a few assumptions:
- There is an organization that already has a bootstrapped PKI, and the root CA of the organization is already distributed.
- The private key for the root CA is stored on an HSM module (or any trusted intermediary, in essence).
- The controller node could be compromised, and the PKI should be able to recover from this.
By having these assumptions and this whole backstory I started my journey.
I have made this PKI by thoroughly looking through this[4] forum and two videos[5][6] as well as the from-scratch.sh[7] and this ziti-cli-functions[8] script from the quickstart.
From this point refer to BOOTSTRAP_PKI.md
Also take a look into pki_topology.(png|puml)
[1] https://openziti.discourse.group/t/general-architecture-questions/2210
[2] https://openziti.discourse.group/t/openziti-network-from-scratch/2168
[4] https://openziti.discourse.group/t/what-does-the-quickstart-do-that-i-need-to-do-myself/1600
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10KUPH-LwlA
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m13qkO6lV9g
[7] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dovholuknf/openziti-compose/main/from-scratch.sh
[8] https://get.openziti.io/ziti-cli-functions.sh
Video from OpenZiti and the host Clint going step-by-step:
