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0 pointshobobaggins4y ago0 comments

Would that be a good use case for something like Userify, so that there's no need to store any keys in a base image/AMI where they can't be easily updated/removed? Then you don't need to give your private keys to a third party, either.

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nijave4y ago

We didn't store keys in the AMI. We added the public half to EC2 then attached that key to the launch configuration where it gets added to the VMs authorized_keys on startup.

I don't think running a Userify daemon on the server is better than a private key in 1Password. At least with the private key approach, you can layer on network access restrictions (firewall rules or VPN). Userify would need to create an outbound connection to its control plane to manage keys

gunapologist994y ago

The Userify daemon in this case is just a shell or python script (https://github.com/userify/shim) so pretty simple to audit.

nijave4y ago

Sure but it's still reaching out to a cloud service for auth info.

You swap "someone could steal my private key from SaaS" with "someone could upload an additional key to SaaS" which I guess just helps if you're reusing keys for unrelated systems?

I think Userify could potentially increase auditability by limiting key sharing but I don't see it actually increasing security assuming you can revoke/rotate shared keys.

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nijave4y ago

We didn't store keys in the AMI. We added the public half to EC2 then attached that key to the launch configuration where it gets added to the VMs authorized_keys on startup.

gunapologist994y ago

The Userify daemon in this case is just a shell or python script (https://github.com/userify/shim) so pretty simple to audit.

nijave4y ago

Sure but it's still reaching out to a cloud service for auth info.

You swap "someone could steal my private key from SaaS" with "someone could upload an additional key to SaaS" which I guess just helps if you're reusing keys for unrelated systems?

I think Userify could potentially increase auditability by limiting key sharing but I don't see it actually increasing security assuming you can revoke/rotate shared keys.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse