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System-to-System Authentication Service (SSAS)

The SSAS can be run as a standalone web service or embedded as a library.

Code Organization

The outline below shows the physical directory structure of the code, with package names highlighted. The service package contains a standalone http service that presents the authorization library via two http servers, one for admin tasks and one for authorization tasks.

Imports always go up the directory tree from leaves; that is, parents do not import from their children. Children may import from their siblings. In short, the ssas and cfg packages must not import from packages in the service directory.

  • ssas
    • cfg
      • configuration management; cfg should not import from ssas packages
    • service
      • admin
        • contains the REST API for managing the service implementation
      • main
        • cli for running servers and some admin tasks
      • public
        • contains the rest API for authorization services

Configuration

Values below are either indicated by Required, SSAS, BCDA, or a combination.

  • Required values must be present in the docker-compose.*.yml files.
  • Some values are primarily for the use of the BCDA API, and are only used by SSAS for testing purposes.
  • Some values are only used by the BCDA API; they are listed for reference.

Very long keys have been split across two rows for formatting purposes.

Some variables below have a note indicating their name should be changed. These changes serve to make the names consistent with established naming patterns and/or to clarify their purpose. They should be made after we complete the initial deployments to AWS envs so that we don't have to change all of our existing deployment checklists in a short timeframe.

Key Required SSAS BCDA Purpose
BCDA_AUTH_PROVIDER Yes X Tells BCDA API which auth provider to use
BCDA_CA_FILE Yes X Tells BCDA API the certificate file with which to validate its TLS connection to SSAS. When setting vars for AWS envs, you must include a var for the key material
BCDA_SSAS_CLIENT_ID Yes X Tells BCDA API the client_id to use with the SSAS REST API.
BCDA_SSAS_SECRET Yes X Tells BCDA API the secret to use with the SSAS REST API.
SSAS_USE_TLS Yes X Should be renamed to BCDA_SSAS_USE_TLS
SSAS_URL Yes X The url of the SSAS admin server. Should be renamed to BCDA_SSAS_URL
SSAS_PUBLIC_URL Yes X The url of the SSAS public server (auth endpoints). Should be renamed to BCDA_SSAS_URL_PUBLIC
DATABASE_URL Yes X Provides the database url
DEBUG Depends X Flag to indicate that the system is running in a development environments. Generally not used outside of docker.
HTTP_ONLY Depends X Flag to operation of the system. By default, the servers will use https. When HTTP_ONLY is present and set to true, they will use http. Generally not used outside of docker.
SSAS_DEFAULT_SYSTEM_SCOPE Yes X Used to set the scope on systems that do not specify their scope. Must be set or runtime failures will occur.
SSAS_HASH_ITERATIONS Yes X Controls how many iterations our secure hashing mechanism performs. Service will panic if this key does not have a value.
SSAS_HASH_KEY_LENGTH Yes X Controls the key length used by our secure hashing mechanism. Service will panic if this key does not have a value.
SSAS_HASH_SALT_SIZE Yes X Controls salt size used by our secure hashing mechanism performs. Service will panic if this key does not have a value.
SSASMFA_CHALLENGE
REQUEST_MILLISECONDS
No X Minimum execution time for RequestFactorChallenge(). If not present, defaults to 1500. In production, this should always be set longer than the longest expected execution time. (Actual execution time is logged.)
SSASMFA_TOKEN
TIMEOUT_MINUTES
No X Token lifetime for self-registration (MFA tokens and Registration tokens). Defaults to 60 (minutes).
SSAS_READ_TIMEOUT No X Sets the read timeout on server requests
SSAS_WRITE_TIMEOUT No X Sets the write timeout on server responses
SSAS_IDLE_TIMEOUT No X Sets how long the server will keep idle connections open
SSAS_LOG No X Directs all ssas logging to a named file
SSAS_ADMIN_PORT
SSAS_PUBLIC_PORT
SSAS_HTTP_TO_HTTPS_PORT
No X X These values are not yet used by code. Intended to allow changing port assignments. If used, will affect BCDA SSAS URL vars.
SSAS_ADMIN_SIGNING_KEY
or
SSAS_ADMIN_SIGNING_KEY_PATH
Yes X Provides the plaintext/path of the admin server signing key. When setting vars for AWS envs, you must include a var for the key material. Set either the key or the path but not both.
SSAS_PUBLIC_SIGNING_KEY
or
SSAS_PUBLIC_SIGNING_KEY_PATH
Yes X Provides the plaintext/path of the public server signing key. When setting vars for AWS envs, you must include a var for the key material. Set either the key or the path but not both.
SSASTOKEN_BLACKLIST_CACHE
CLEANUP_MINUTES
No X Tunes the frequency that expired entries are cleared from the token blacklist cache. Defaults to 15 minutes.
SSASTOKEN_BLACKLIST_CACHE
TIMEOUT_MINUTES
No X Sets the lifetime of token blacklist cache entries. Defaults to 24 hours.
SSASTOKEN_BLACKLIST_CACHE
REFRESH_MINUTES
No X Configures the number of minutes between times the token blacklist cache is refreshed from the database.
BCDA_TLS_CERT Depends X The cert used when the SSAS service is running in secure mode. When setting vars for AWS envs, you must include a var for the cert material. This var should be renamed to SSAS_TLS_CERT.
BCDA_TLS_KEY Depends X The private key used when the SSAS service is running in secure mode. When setting vars for AWS envs, you must include a var for the key material. This var should be renamed to SSAS_TLS_KEY.
SSAS_CLIENT_ASSERTION_AUD Yes X The audience (aud) claim value required when authenticating using client assertion tokens (v2/token).
SSAS_CRED_TIMEOUT_DAYS No X Setting for timeout of SSAS Credentials. Utilized in CLI command —list-exp-creds to show credentials that shows credentials about to timeout or expire. Defaults to 60 days.
SSAS_CRED_EXPIRATION_DAYS No X Setting for expiration of SSAS Credentials. Utilized in (1) setting ExpiresAt value during inital token creation, (2) app logic checks to see if a presented token is expired, and (3) in CLI command —list-exp-creds to show credentials about to timeout or expire. Defaults to 90 days.
SSAS_CRED_WARNING_DAYS No X Setting for warning of SSAS Credentials. Utilized in CLI command —list-exp-creds to show credentials about to timeout or expire. Defaults to 7 days.

Development Setup

Install and Use Pre-commit

Anyone committing to this repo must use the pre-commit hook to lower the likelihood that secrets will be exposed.

Step 1: Install pre-commit

You can install pre-commit using the MacOS package manager Homebrew:

brew install pre-commit

Other installation options can be found in the pre-commit documentation.

Step 2: Install the hooks

You will need to manually install goimports for the following commands to function:

go install golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports@latest

Run the following command to install the hook:

pre-commit install

This will download and install the pre-commit hooks specified in .pre-commit-config.yaml, which includes gitleaks for secret scanning and go-imports to ensure that any added, copied, or modified go files are formatted properly.

Go Modules

The project uses Go Modules allowing you to clone the repo outside of the $GOPATH. This also means that running go get inside the repo will add the dependency to the project, not globally.

Build

Build all the code and containers with make docker-bootstrap. Alternatively, docker compose up ssas will build and run the SSAS by itself. Note that SSAS needs the db container to be running as well.

Bootstrapping CLI

SSAS currently has a simple CLI intended to make bootstrapping tasks and manual testing easier to accomplish. The CLI will only run one command at a time; commands do not chain.

The sequence of commands needed to bootstrap the SSAS into a new environment is as follows:

  1. migrate, which will build or update the tables
  2. add-fixture-data, which adds the admin group and seeds minimal data for smoke Testing
  3. new-admin-system, which adds an admin system and returns its client_id
  4. reset-secret, which replaces the secret associated with a client_id and returns that new secret
  5. start, which starts the servers and the token blacklist cache

You will need the admin client_id and secret to use the service's admin endpoints.

Note that to initialize our docker container, we use migrate-and-start, which combines the first three of the steps above with some conditional logic to make sure we're running in a development environment. This command should most likely not be used elsewhere.

Test

The SSAS can be tested by running make unit-test. You can also use the repo-wide command make test, which will run tests against the entire repo, including the SSAS code. Some tests are designed to be only run as needed, and are excluded from make by a build tag. To include one of these test suites, follow the instructions at the top of the test file.

Running Single / Single-file Unit Tests

This step assumes that the user has installed VSCode, the Go language extension available here, and has successfully imported test data to their local database.

To run tests from within VSCode: In a FILENAME_test.go file, there will be a green arrow to the left of the method name, and clicking this arrow will run a single test locally. Tests should not be dependent upon other tests, but if a known-good test is failing, the user can run all tests in a given file by going to View -> Command Palette -> Go: Test Package, which will run all tests in a given file. Alternatively, in some instances, the init() method can be commented out to enable testing of single functions.

Integration Testing

To run postman tests locally:

Build and startup the required containers. Building with docker compose up first will significantly improve the performance of the following steps.

docker compose up
docker compose stop
docker compose up -d db
docker compose up ssas

If this is the first time you've started the containers, set up your database tables and seed them with sample group and systems:

make load-fixtures

point your browser at one of the following ports, or use the postman test collection in tests.

  • public server: 3103
  • admin server: 3104
  • forwarding server: 3105

Goland IDE

To run a test suite inside of Goland IDE, edit its configuration from the Run menu and add values for all necessary environmental variables. It is also possible to run individual tests, but that may require configurations for each test.

Docker Fun

To get postgres dump of schema (replace PASSHERE with password)

docker run --rm --network bcda-ssas-app_default -e PGPASSWORD=PASSHERE -it postgres pg_dump -s -h bcda-ssas-app_db_1 -d bcda -U postgres > schema.sql

To reset a secret by client id (can be found in Makefile):

docker compose run --rm ssas sh -c 'ssas --reset-secret --client-id=[client_id]'

To list all active IPs from the connected database:

docker compose run --rm ssas sh -c 'ssas --list-ips'

Swagger Documentation

The admin server has Swagger documentation. To access:

  1. Make sure it's been built (the container will stop after a few seconds when the documentation is ready)

    docker compose up documentation

  2. Make sure the ssas container is running

    docker compose up ssas

  3. Access Swagger in your browser: http://localhost:3104/swagger