[HBASE-3025] Coprocessor based simple access control

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.92.0
• Component/s: Coprocessors
• Hadoop Flags: Reviewed
• Release Note: This is part of an overall implementation of security features for HBase. This issue adds a new AccessController coprocessor which, when enabled, performs authorization checks on all cluster operations, using stored access control lists.
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Andrew Kyle Purtell
• Created: 22/Sep/10 00:03
• Updated: 20/Nov/15 12:43
• Resolved: 19/Nov/11 00:32

Description

Thanks for the clarification Jeff which reminds me to edit this issue.

Goals of this issue

1. Client access to HBase is authenticated
2. User data is private unless access has been granted
3. Access to data can be granted at a table or per column family basis.

Non-Goals of this issue

The following items will be left out of the initial implementation for simplicity:

1. Row-level or per value (cell) This would require broader changes for storing the ACLs inline with rows. It's still a future goal, but would slow down the initial implementation considerably.
2. Push down of file ownership to HDFS While table ownership seems like a useful construct to start with (at least to lay the groundwork for future changes), making HBase act as table owners when interacting with HDFS would require more changes. In additional, while HDFS file ownership would make applying quotas easy, and possibly make bulk imports more straightforward, it's not clean it would offer a more secure setup. We'll leave this to evaluate in a later phase.
3. HBase managed "roles" as collections of permissions We will not model "roles" internally in HBase to begin with. We will instead allow group names to be granted permissions, which will allow some external modeling of roles via group memberships. Groups will be created and manipulated externally to HBase.

While the assignment of permissions to roles and roles to users (or other roles) allows a great deal of flexibility in security policy, it would add complexity to the initial implementation.

After the initial implementation, which will appear on this issue, we will evaluate the addition of role definitions internal to HBase in a new JIRA. In this scheme, administrators could assign permissions specifying HDFS groups, and additionally HBase roles. HBase roles would be created and manipulated internally to HBase, and would appear distinct from HDFS groups via some syntactic sugar. HBase role definitions will be allowed to reference other HBase role definitions.

Issue Links

• depends upon: HBASE-2001 Coprocessors: Colocate user code with regions
• depends upon: HBASE-3615 Implement token based DIGEST-MD5 authentication for MapReduce tasks
• depends upon: ZOOKEEPER-938 Support Kerberos authentication of clients.
• depends upon: HBASE-2418 add support for ZooKeeper authentication
• depends upon: HBASE-2742 Provide strong authentication with a secure RPC engine
• is depended upon by: HBASE-3045 Extend HBASE-3025 into a role based access control model using "HBase groups"
• relates to: HBASE-1697 Discretionary access control
• relates to: HBASE-3435 Per-column-qualifier and per-key-value security for HBASE-3025