RabbitMQ Certificate Trust Store

This was migrated to https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server

This repository has been moved to the main unified RabbitMQ "monorepo", including all open issues. You can find the source under /deps/rabbitmq_trust_store. All issues have been transferred.

Overview

This plugin provides an alternative TLS (x.509) certificate verification strategy. Instead of the traditional PKI chain traversal mechanism, this strategy simply checks the leaf certificate presented by a client against an approved ("whitelisted") set of certificates.

Rationale

When RabbitMQ is configured to use TLS for client connections, by default it will use the standard PKI certificate chain traversal process. What certificates are trusted is ultimately controlled by adjusting the set of trusted CA certificates.

This configuration is standard for data services and it works well for many use cases. However, this configuration is largely static: a change in trusted CA certificates requires a cluster reconfiguration (redeployment). There is no convenient means with which to change the set in realtime, and in particular without affecting existing client connections.

This plugin offers an alternative. It maintains a set (list) of trusted .PEM formatted TLS (x509) certificates, refreshed at configurable intervals. Said certificates are then used to verify inbound TLS-enabled client connections across the entire RabbitMQ node (affects all plugins and protocols). The set is node-local.

Certificates can be loaded into the trusted list from different sources. Sources are loaded using "providers". Two providers ship with the plugin: the local filesystem and an HTTPS endpoint.

New providers can be added by implementing the rabbit_trust_store_certificate_provider behaviour.

The default provider is rabbit_trust_store_file_provider, which will load certificates from a configured local filesystem directory.

Installation

This plugin ships with modern RabbitMQ versions. Like all plugins, it has to be enabled before it can be used:

rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_trust_store

Usage

Filesystem provider

Configure the trust store with a directory of whitelisted certificates and a refresh interval:

## trusted certificate directory path
trust_store.directory        = $HOME/rabbit/whitelist
trust_store.refresh_interval = 30

Setting refresh_interval to 0 seconds will disable automatic refresh.

Certificates are identified and distinguished by their filenames, file modification time and a hash value of file contents.

Installing a Certificate

Write a PEM formatted certificate file to the configured directory to whitelist it. This contains all the necessary information to authorize a client which presents the very same certificate to the server.

Removing a Certificate

Delete the certificate file from the configured directory to remove it from the whitelist.

Note: TLS session caching bypasses the trust store certificate validation and can make it seem as if a removed certificate is still active. Disabling session caching in the broker by setting the reuse_sessions ssl option to false can be done if timely certificate removal is important.

HTTP provider

HTTP provider loads certificates via HTTP(S) from remote server.

The server should have following API:

• GET <root> - list certificates in JSON format: {"certificates": [{"id": <id>, "path": <url>}, ...]}
• GET <root>/<path> - download PEM encoded certificate.

Where <root> is a configured certificate path, <id> - unique certificate identifier, <path> - relative certificate path to load it from server.

Configuration of the HTTP provider:

trust_store.providers.1      = http
trust_store.url              = https://example.cert.url/path
trust_store.refresh_interval = 30

The example above uses an alias, http for rabbit_trust_store_http_provider. Available aliases are:

• file - rabbit_trust_store_file_provider
• http - rabbit_trust_store_http_provider

In the erlang terms format:

{rabbitmq_trust_store,
 [{providers, [rabbit_trust_store_http_provider]},
  {url, "https://example.cert.url/path"},
  {refresh_interval, {seconds, 30}}
 ]}.

You can specify TLS options if you use HTTPS:

trust_store.providers.1      = http
trust_store.url              = https://example.secure.cert.url/path
trust_store.refresh_interval = 30
trust_store.ssl_options.certfile   = /client/cert.pem
trust_store.ssl_options.keyfile    = /client/key.pem
trust_store.ssl_options.cacertfile = /ca/cert.pem

In the erlang terms format:

{rabbitmq_trust_store,
 [{providers, [rabbit_trust_store_http_provider]},
  {url, "https://example.secure.cert.url/path"},
  {refresh_interval, {seconds, 30}},
  {ssl_options, [{certfile, "/client/cert.pem"},
                 {keyfile, "/client/key.pem"},
                 {cacertfile, "/ca/cert.pem"}
                ]}
 ]}.

HTTP provider uses If-Modified-Since during list request header to avoid updating unchanged list of certificates.

You can additionally specify headers (e.g. authorization) using Erlang term format:

{rabbitmq_trust_store,
 [{providers, [rabbit_trust_store_http_provider]},
  {url, "https://example.cert.url/path"},
  {headers, [{"Authorization", "Bearer token"}]},
  {refresh_interval, {seconds, 30}}
 ]}.

Example

examples/rabbitmq_trust_store_django is an example Django application, which serves certificates from a directory.

Listing certificates

To list the currently loaded certificates use the rabbitmqctl utility as follows:

    rabbitmqctl eval 'io:format(rabbit_trust_store:list()).'

This will output a formatted list of certificates similar to:

    Name: cert.pem
    Serial: 1 | 0x1
    Subject: O=client,CN=snowman.local
    Issuer: L=87613,CN=MyTestRootCA
    Validity: "2016-05-24T15:28:25Z - 2026-05-22T15:28:25Z"

Note that this command reads each certificate from disk in order to extract all the relevant information. If there are a large number of certificates in the trust store use this command sparingly.

How it Works

When the trust-store starts it configures TLS listening sockets, whitelists the certificates in the given directory, then accepting sockets can query the trust-store with their client's certificate. It refreshes the whitelist to correspond with changes in the directory's contents, installing and removing certificate details, after a refresh interval or a manual refresh (by invoking a rabbitmqctl eval 'rabbit_trust_store:refresh().' from the commandline).

Building from Source

See Plugin Development guide.

TL;DR: running

make dist

will build the plugin and put build artifacts under the ./plugins directory.

Copyright and License

(c) 2007-2020 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.

Released under the MPL, the same license as RabbitMQ.