Bastion: Open-Source Access Control for Complex Infrastructure
▼ Summary
– The Bastion is an open-source project that acts as a single, controlled entry point (bastion host) for administrators to access infrastructure, addressing the problem of access sprawl.
– It centralizes authentication and authorization, allowing users to connect through it so that individual servers only need to trust group accounts, simplifying identity management.
– The system supports modern authentication methods like TOTP and Yubico PIV, while maintaining compatibility with standard SSH clients and servers for use with both old and new equipment.
– It provides fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC), session recording, and workflow support for tools like SCP, enabling secure delegation and centralized logging without relying on external databases.
– The Bastion can facilitate cross-organization work through realms for trust between bastions and supports features like HTTPS proxying, all designed to centralize access without disrupting daily workflows.
Managing access across a sprawling infrastructure of servers, virtual machines, and network devices is a constant challenge for operational teams. The Bastion open-source project offers a sophisticated solution by creating a hardened, centralized access layer. This system acts as a single, fortified entry point for administrators and developers needing SSH connectivity, transforming chaotic access sprawl into a controlled and auditable workflow.
At its heart, The Bastion inserts a cluster of machines between users and the infrastructure they manage. Each team member holds an account on the bastion itself, organized into one or more groups. The critical servers and devices behind the bastion only need to recognize and trust these group identities. This approach dramatically simplifies credential management by eliminating the need for numerous individual accounts on every single system. When a user connects, the bastion authenticates them, verifies their permissions, and then establishes the session. The target device only ever interacts with the authorized group, never directly with the individual user.
To bolster security, the platform supports robust authentication methods. While public key authentication is standard, organizations can integrate TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password) and Yubico PIV key checks. This provides flexible, strong authentication controls without requiring configuration changes across an entire server fleet. A significant advantage is its compatibility; the system is designed to work with common SSH clients on the user side and standard SSH daemons on the server side. This allows teams to secure legacy equipment that may only support older protocols. These older systems can remain safely behind internal firewalls, while The Bastion handles modern, secure connections at the network edge.
A core strength of The Bastion is its ability to enable secure delegation without expanding risk. It incorporates fine-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), allowing teams to delegate specific tasks to accounts or groups. This control can integrate with existing HR systems or directory services to automate account lifecycle management. Group administrators can synchronize access control lists with a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). For automation, processes can interact with a JSON API over SSH. Crucially, users maintain their familiar workflows, as the system fully supports tools like scp, sftp, and rsync. For compliance and auditing, it provides comprehensive session recording for both interactive and non-interactive sessions, storing data in ttyrec files and forwarding logs via syslog to SIEM tools.
The architecture prioritizes reliability by minimizing dependencies. The Bastion does not rely on external databases or services during authentication or authorization, reducing potential points of failure. For high availability, clusters can operate in an active-active configuration, ensuring seamless access even if one instance encounters issues.
The project also addresses complex, cross-organizational collaboration. It supports the concept of realms, which establish trust between two separate Bastion deployments. This allows authentication and authorization to be managed independently, enabling each organization to maintain its own security policies while facilitating secure access for partners. Additional features include HTTPS proxying with man-in-the-middle inspection for devices using network APIs and the ability to decouple ingress and egress passwords, which is particularly useful in environments containing older network hardware.
While the concept of a bastion host is well-established, this open-source project demonstrates how to implement extensive control and oversight without disrupting daily operations. For teams struggling with fragmented systems and inconsistent access management, The Bastion provides a powerful framework to consolidate and secure all access paths into a single, predictable, and auditable flow.
(Source: HelpNet Security)