Security Compliance & PCI-DSS

As of the Newton release, keystone added security compliance features, specifically to satisfy Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) v3.1 requirements. See Security Hardening: PCI-DSS <https://specs.openstack.org/openstack/keystone-specs/specs/keystone/newton/ pci-dss.html> for more information on PCI-DSS.

Security compliance features are disabled by default and most of the features only apply to the SQL backend for the identity driver. Other identity backends, such as LDAP, should implement their own security controls.

These features can be enabled by changing the configuration settings under the [security_compliance] section in keystone.conf.

Account Lockout Threshold

The account lockout feature limits the number of times a user can attempt to login with an incorrect password. If a user fails to authenticate after the maximum number of attempts, the user will be disabled. Users can be re-enabled by explicitly setting the enable user attribute via the API.

You can set the maximum number of failed authentication attempts by setting the lockout_failure_attempts:

[security_compliance]
lockout_failure_attempts = 6

You can then set the number of minutes a user would be locked out by setting the lockout_duration in seconds:

[security_compliance]
lockout_duration = 1800

If the lockout_duration is not set, then users may be locked out indefinitely until the user is explicitly enabled via the API.

Finally, you can set it so that some users, such as service users, are never locked out by setting the user options attribute ignore_lockout_failure_attempts to True via a user update API (PATCH /v3/users) call.

Disabling Inactive Users

PCI-DSS 8.1.4 requires that inactive user accounts be removed or disabled within 90 days. You can achieve this by setting the disable_user_account_days_inactive:

[security_compliance]
disable_user_account_days_inactive = 90

This above example means that users that have not authenticated (inactive) for the past 90 days will be automatically disabled. Users can be re-enabled by explicitly setting the enable user attribute via the API.

Force users to immediately change their password upon first use

PCI-DSS 8.2.6 requires users to change their password for first time use and upon an administrative password reset. Within the identity user API, create user and update user are considered administrative password changes. Whereas, change password for user is a self-service password change. Once this feature is enabled, new users, and users that have had their password reset, will be required to change their password at the next authentication (first use), before being able to access any services.

Prior to enabling this feature, you will want to exempt any users, especially service account users, that you do not wish to be required to change their password. You can mark a user as exempt by setting the user options attribute ignore_change_password_upon_first_use to True via a user update API (PATCH /v3/users) call.

Warning

Failure to mark service users as exempt from this requirement will result in your service account passwords becoming expired after being reset.

When ready, you can configure it so that users are forced to change their password upon first use by setting change_password_after_first_use:

[security_compliance]
change_password_after_first_use = True

Password Expiration

Passwords can be configured to expire within a certain number of days by setting the password_expires_days:

[security_compliance]
password_expires_days = 90

Once set, any new password changes will have an expiration date based on the date/time of the password change plus the number of days defined here. Existing passwords will not be impacted. If you want existing passwords to have an expiration date, you would need to run a SQL script against the password table in the database to update the expires_at column.

In addition, you can set it so that passwords never expire for some users by setting the user options attribute ignore_password_expiry to True via a user update API (PATCH /v3/users) call.

Password Strength Requirements

You set password strength requirements, such as requiring numbers in passwords or setting a minimum password length, by adding a regular expression to the password_regex:

[security_compliance]
password_regex = ^(?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-zA-Z]).{7,}$

The above is an example of a regular expression that requires 1 letter, 1 digit, and a minimum length of 7 characters.

If you do set the password_regex, you will also want to provide text that describes your password strength requirements. You can do this by setting the password_regex_description:

[security_compliance]
password_regex_description = Passwords must contain at least 1 letter, 1
                             digit, and be a minimum length of 7
                             characters.

The description will be returned to users to explain why their requested password was insufficient.

Note

It is imperative to ensure the password_regex_description fully and completely describes the password_regex. If the two options are out of sync, the help text may inaccurately describe the password requirements being applied to the password. This can lead to poor user experience.

Unique Password History

The password history requirements controls the number of passwords for a user that must be unique before an old password can be reused. You can enforce this by setting the unique_last_password_count:

[security_compliance]
unique_last_password_count= 5

The above example will not allow a user to create a new password that is the same as any of their last 4 previous passwords.

Similarly, you can set the number of days that a password must be used before the user can change it by setting the minimum_password_age:

[security_compliance]
minimum_password_age = 1

In the above example, once a user changes their password, they would not be able to change it again for 1 day. This prevents users from changing their passwords immediately in order to wipe out their password history and reuse an old password.