Without this patch, a Kerberized NFSv4.1/4.2 mount must provide
a Kerberos credential for the client at mount time. This credential
is typically referred to as a "machine credential". It can be
created one of two ways:
- The user (usually root) has a valid TGT at the time the mount
is done and this becomes the machine credential.
There are two problems with this.
1 - The user doing the mount must have a valid TGT for a user
principal at mount time. As such, the mount cannot be put
in fstab(5) or similar.
2 - When the TGT expires, the mount breaks.
- The client machine has a service principal in its default keytab
file and this service principal (typically called a host-based
initiator credential) is used as the machine credential.
There are problems with this approach as well:
1 - There is a certain amount of administrative overhead creating
the service principal for the NFS client, creating a keytab
entry for this principal and then copying the keytab entry
into the client's default keytab file via some secure means.
2 - The NFS client must have a fixed, well known, DNS name, since
that FQDN is in the service principal name as the instance.
This patch uses a feature of NFSv4.1/4.2 called SP4_NONE, which
allows the state maintenance operations to be performed by any
authentication mechanism, to do these operations via AUTH_SYS
instead of RPCSEC_GSS (Kerberos). As such, neither of the above
mechanisms is needed.
It is hoped that this option will encourage adoption of Kerberized
NFS mounts using TLS, to provide a more secure NFS mount.
This new NFSv4.1/4.2 mount option, called "syskrb5" must be used
with "sec=krb5[ip]" to avoid the need for either of the above
Kerberos setups to be done by the client.
Note that all file access/modification operations still require
users on the NFS client to have a valid TGT recognized by the
NFSv4.1/4.2 server. As such, this option allows, at most, a
malicious client to do some sort of DOS attack.
Although not required, use of "tls" with this new option is
encouraged, since it provides on-the-wire encryption plus,
optionally, client identity verification via a X.509
certificate provided to the server during TLS handshake.
Alternately, "sec=krb5p" does provide on-the-wire
encryption of file data.
A mount_nfs(8) man page update will be done in a separate commit.
Discussed on: freebsd-current@
MFC after: 3 months
896516e54a