abrown38andClaude Opus 5.5
34292eeebb
Zones, address sets (IPv4 and IPv6 mixed, dynamic sets with timeouts) and services, ordered rules in the early, input, forward and output chains, port forwards with hairpin NAT and IPv6 pinholes, source NAT, redirects, and switchable built-ins (loopback, conntrack, ICMPv6, antispoofing, MSS clamping, DHCPv6 client, flowtable). Every change is validated, checked with nft -c and applied in one transaction to Housecarl's own table, inet housecarl; changes made over the network roll back unless confirmed, and the confirmed ruleset is loaded at boot by housecarl-ruleset.service. An empty configuration applies nothing. Also: hit counters and the drop log (nflog), 'hc import' of an existing nftables ruleset and 'hc takeover', the hc CLI, the REST API and the web UI, users, scoped tokens (sets:write:NAME), the audit log, the web UI's certificate through Jarl, Debian packages, docs, unit tests with real nft 1.1.3, and an e2e test with real traffic (71 checks). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3.4 KiB
Users, permissions and tokens
Users
Administrators may do everything, including managing users. Everyone
else gets grants, resource:access:
| Resource | read | write |
|---|---|---|
config |
settings, zones, sets, services, rules, NAT, the ruleset, history, interfaces, probation (the web UI shows the forms locked) | change them, undo, import, confirm and roll back |
sets |
dynamic sets' entries | add and remove entries |
log |
hit counters and the log | – |
audit |
the audit log | – |
* |
all of the above |
A sets grant can name the sets it covers: sets:write:guests may
change the entries of the set guests and no other;
sets:read:guests,blocked may read two. That is the grant for another
program, such as Steward's captive portal, which should be able to let a
client in and nothing more. A dynamic set's entries need a sets grant
even for those with config:write.
Only administrators may delete other tables (hc takeover), and manage
users and the certificate (hc cert, Server → Certificate).
Roles are ready-made sets of grants:
| Role | Grants |
|---|---|
viewer |
config:read sets:read log:read |
operator |
config:write sets:write log:read audit:read |
log |
log:read, e.g. for a monitoring script |
hc user add sam --role operator
hc user add portal --no-password --grant sets:write:guests # tokens only
hc user update sam --grant config:read --grant log:read
The last administrator can't be removed, demoted or disabled.
API tokens
A token has its user's permissions, or fewer. A token made with --role
or --grant can do only that, even if its user can do more:
hc token create portal --user portal --grant sets:write:guests --expires 365d
The secret is shown once; only its hash is stored. A restricted token can only create tokens with a subset of its own grants. The web UI only offers roles within what your account may do; a token with more would get no more than its user anyway.
Rotating gives a token a new secret, keeping its ID, name and permissions, so only the programs that use it need updating:
hc token rotate 7 --grace 1h # the old secret works for another hour
hc token rotate --current --save # this CLI's own token
A token that expires gets its lifetime again, from now (--expires 90d
or never to change it). Without --grace the old secret stops at once:
use that when it may have leaked. Using an old secret during its grace
period is logged, naming the token and the address, so you can find the
programs still to update. A restricted token may rotate itself and tokens
no wider than itself. hc token list shows when each token was last
used, and from where. hc token revoke ID stops one at once.
The local socket
On the firewall, /run/housecarl/housecarl.sock lets root and the
housecarl user act as administrator without a token, and their changes
aren't on probation. The audit log shows them by their system user name.
Both can already change the machine's firewall, so this adds convenience,
not power. Anyone else on the socket needs a token, and their changes are
on probation like any other.
The audit log
Logins (and failed ones), users, tokens, every configuration change (with
its history entry), confirmations and rollbacks, imports, takeovers and
dynamic set entries are recorded with who, from where and how: session,
token or socket.