I want an API which can query a MySQL database and return the desired data. Currently for development, I am using a AWS lambda. I am passing an access token in the request, so I am able to verify that a valid user is making the request. However, when I fetch data from the database, I am logging on to the database using a username and password and the database is open for public access. I think this application has security vulnerabilities because if anyone knows the database endpoint, they can brute force the username and password.
Is there a more secure approach in accomplishing this. The general workflow is:
API Gateway -> Lambda -> RDS (MySQL) -> Client
And the vulnerability I would like to avoid is the open access of the RDS MySQL DB.
You should configure the Lambda function to run inside the VPC with the RDS instance, and then disable public access to the RDS instance.
Related
I have request from users to be able to connect to my datasets and table in bigquery to fetch the data and manipulate it programmatically outside of GCP
The situation now that i created a service account with credentials to view data and i share the json key of this service account with users in email .
I want to avoid users to use the key inside their code
best way to secure sharing this key with them
The best way to share your application outside Google Cloud is through Workload Identity Federation. Although, creating public/private key pairs is also a secured way to use and share your user-managed service account, it can still impose a threat and security risk if not correctly managed.
Just run through this documentation and use IAM external identities to impersonate a service account to avoid any security issues on your security account keys even without mantaining it.
I was successfully able to connect to RDS like any other database connection.
I use spring jpa data ( repository ) to do CRUD operation on postgres db.
currently I provide the db url and the credential in the properties file
spring:
datasource:
url: jdbc:postgresql://<rds-endpoint>:5432/<dbschema>
username: <dbuser>
password: <dbpassword>
However this is not an option while connecting to production or preproduction.
what is the best practise here.
Does AWS provide any inbuild mechanism to read these details from an endpoint like in the case of accessing S3 ?
My intention is not expose the password.
Several options are available to you:
Use the recently announced IAM access to Postgres RDS
Use Systems Manager Parameter Store to store the password
Use Secrets Manager to store the password and automatically rotate credentials
For 2 and 3, look up the password on application start in Spring using a PropertyPlaceholderConfiguration and the AWSSimpleSystemsManagement client (GetParameter request). SystemsManager can proxy requests to SecretsManager to keep a single interface in your code to access parameters.
IAM credentials is more secure in that:
If using EC2 instance profiles, access to the database uses short lived temporary credentials.
If not on EC2 you can generate short lived authentication tokens.
The password is not stored in your configuration.
If you have a separate database team they can manage access independent of the application user.
Removing access can be done via IAM
another generic option I found was to use AWS Secret Manager
(doc link)
RDS specific solution is to connect to DB Instance Using the AWS SDK using IAMDBAuth
I set up IAM authentication on an RDS instance, and I'm able to use IAM to get database passwords that work for 15-minutes. This is fine to access the database for backups, but this database backs an web application so currently after 15 minutes the password used by the app to connect to the DB becomes invalid and the app crashes as it can no longer access the DB.
However, in the RDS IAM docs there's this line:
For applications running on Amazon EC2, you can use EC2 instance profile credentials to access the database, so you don't need to use database passwords on your EC2 instance.
This implies that on EC2 there's no need to use the IAM temporary DB password, which would mean that my app should be able to connect to the DB as long as it's running on EC2 and I set up the role permissions (which I think I did correctly). However, I can't get my app running on EC2 to be able to connect to the RDS DB except by using the 15-minute temporary password. If I try connecting with a normal MySQL connection with no password I get permission denied. Is there something special that needs to be done to connect to RDS using the EC2 instance profile, or is it not possible without using 15-minute temporary passwords?
According to the documentation you linked (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/UsingWithRDS.IAMDBAuth.html), you need to perform the following steps (See under "Authenticating to a DB Instance or DB Cluster Using IAM Database Authentication"):
Use the AWS SDK for Java or AWS CLI to get an authentication token you can use to identify the IAM user or role. To learn how to get an authentication token, see Getting an Authentication Token.
Connect to the database using an SSL connection, specifying the IAM user or role as the database user account and the authentication token as the password. For more information, see Connecting to a DB Instance or DB Cluster Using IAM Database Authentication.
That means for every connection you intend to open, you need to get a valid Token using the AWS SDK. This is where using the correct instance profile with the RDS permission is needed. See also the code examples further down the AWS documentation page.
I think however this requires quite a bit of effort on your side, to always get a valid token before opening a connection. It makes using an off-the-shelf connection pool difficult. Probably once open, the connection will remain open even after the token expires, but you still need to handle the case where more connections need to be opened at a later time.
I would stick with a normal user/password access for the application, using IAM for this case seems to be too much effort.
For applications running on Amazon EC2, you can use EC2 instance profile credentials to access the database, so you don't need to use database passwords on your EC2 instance.
You're misinterpreting what this means. It means you don't have to use static passwords or store them on the instance.
The idea is that you generate a new authentication token each time you establish a connection to the database. The token is generated on your instance, using the instance role credentials. It can only be used to authenticate for 15 minutes, but once connected, you don't lose your database connection after 15 minutes. You remain connected.
If your application doesn't reuse database connections, then you likely have a design flaw there.
I have an application that creates automatically some AWS instances and runs a script on them.
Each script tries to connect to a remote DB for which I need to provide the Public DNS Hostname, DB password, DB Username, etc...
What is the most secure way to do that without having to store the plain password?
And without risking somebody else running the same script being able to get those credentials?
Thanks a lot
You could use the AWS SSM service's Parameter Store:
Parameter Store centralizes the management of configuration data -
such as passwords, license keys, or database connection strings - that
you commonly reference in scripts, commands, or other automation and
configuration workflows. With granular security controls for managing
user access and strong encryption for sensitive data such as
passwords, Parameter Store improves the overall security posture of
your managed instances. Encrypting parameters with Parameter Store is
not supported in all regions.
You would create an IAM role that has access to the Parameter Store values, and assigned that role to the EC2 instances you are dynamically creating. Then the script would be able to use the AWS SDK/CLI to retrieve those values from the parameter store.
Alternatively, if the database is an RDS database that supports IAM authentication (only MySQL and Aurora at this time) then you could create an IAM role that has direct access to the database and assign that role to the EC2 instances.
I wanted to setup an RDS instance store data for reporting. I have scrips that run different rest calls against certain sites that require bulk admin privilege on the back end because they dump their rest call data into a csv and then do a bulk csv insert into Sql Server SE. In my local environment setting up a user for my scripts to use with bulk admin privileges was easy. However, I couldn't seem to figure out how to do it in RDS. I opened a ticket with Amazon and they suggested writing a policy for it. So I figured I would ask here if this is possible and possible alternatives? If bulk/system admin privileges are out of the question in RDS I guess I will just have to use an AWS EC2 instance with Sql Server set up on it.
Bulk insert is not possible with RDS. The data_file parameter of the BULK INSERT command must refer to a file accessible by the machine running SQL Server.
Also, RDS does not support the bulkadmin server role.
Supported SQL Server Roles and Permissions
Importing and Exporting SQL Server Data