Using Active Directory to Authenticate Users

You can configure Shield to communicate with Active Directory to authenticate users. To integrate with Active Directory, you configure an Active Directory realm and assign Active Directory users and groups to Shield roles in the role mapping file.

To protect passwords, communications between Shield and the LDAP server should be encrypted using SSL/TLS. Clients and nodes that connect via SSL/TLS to the LDAP server need to have the LDAP server’s certificate or the server’s root CA certificate installed in their keystore or truststore. For more information about installing certificates, see Encrypting Communications Between Shield and Active Directory with SSL/TLS.

Configuring an Active Directory Realm

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Shield uses LDAP to communicate with Active Directory, so Active Directory realms are similar to LDAP realms. Like LDAP directories, Active Directory stores users and groups hierarchically. The directory’s hierarchy is built from containers such as the organizational unit (ou), organization (o), and domain controller (dc).

The path to a entry is a Distinguished Name (DN) that uniquely identifies a user or group. User and group names typically have attributes such as a common name (cn) or unique ID (uid). A DN is specified as a string, for example "cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com". White space is ignored.

When you use Active Directory for authentication, the username entered by the user is expected to match the sAMAccountName or userPrincipalName, not the common name.

To configure an Active Directory realm:

Add a realm configuration of type active_directory to elasticsearch.yml in the shield.authc.realms namespace. At a minimum, you must set the realm type to active_directory and specify the Active Directory domain_name. To use SSL/TLS to encrypt communications with the Active Directory server, you must also set the url attribute and specify the LDAPS protocol and secure port number. If you are configuring multiple realms, you should also explicitly set the order attribute to control the order in which the realms are consulted during authentication. See Active Directory Realm Settings for all of the options you can set for an Active Directory realm.

Binding to Active Directory fails if the domain name is not mapped in DNS. If DNS is not being provided by a Windows DNS server, add a mapping for the domain in the local /etc/hosts file.

For example, the following realm configuration configures Shield to connect to ldaps://example.com:636 to authenticate users through Active Directory.

shield:
  authc:
    realms:
      active_directory:
        type: active_directory
        order: 0 
        domain_name: ad.example.com
        url: ldaps://ad.example.com:636 
        unmapped_groups_as_roles: true 
      ...

	The realm order controls the order in which the configured realms are checked when authenticating a user.
	If you don’t specify the URL, it defaults to `ldap:<domain_name>:389`.
	When this option is enabled, Shield automatically maps Active Directory groups to roles of the same name defined in `roles.yml`.

Restart Elasticsearch.

Active Directory Realm Settings

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Setting	Required	Description
`type`	yes	Indicates the realm type. Must be set to `active_directory`.
`order`	no	Indicates the priority of this realm within the realm chain. Realms with a lower order are consulted first. Although not required, we recommend explicitly setting this value when you configure multiple realms. Defaults to `Integer.MAX_VALUE`.
`enabled`	no	Indicates whether this realm is enabled or disabled. Enables you to disable a realm without removing its configuration. Defaults to `true`.
`domain_name`	yes	Specifies the domain name of the Active Directory. Shield uses the domain name to derive the LDAP URL and `user_search_dn` if those fields are not specified.
`url`	no	Specifies an LDAP URL of the form `ldap[s]://<server>:<port>`. Shield attempts to authenticate against this URL. If the URL is not specified, Shield derives it from the `domain_name`, assuming an unencrypted connection to port 389. For example, `ldap://<domain_name>:389`. You must specify the URL to connect using SSL/TLS or connect to a custom port.
`user_search.base_dn`	no	Specifies the context to search for the user. Defaults to the root of the Active Directory domain.
`user_search.scope`	no	Specifies whether the user search should be `sub_tree` (default), `one_level`, or `base`. `sub_tree` searches all objects contained under `base_dn`. `one_level` only searches users directly contained within the `base_dn`. `base` specifies that the `base_dn` is a user object and that it is the only user considered.
`user_search.filter`	no	Specifies a filter to use to lookup a user given a username. The default filter looks up `user` objects with either `sAMAccountName` or `userPrincipalName`. If specified, this must be a proper LDAP user search filter, for example `(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName={0}))`. For more information, see Search Filter Syntax.
`group_search.base_dn`	no	Specifies the context to search for groups in which the user has membership. Defaults to the root of the Active Directory domain.
`group_search.scope`	no	Specifies whether the group search should be `sub_tree` (default), `one_level` or `base`. `sub_tree` searches all objects contained under `base_dn`. `one_level` searches for groups directly contained within the `base_dn`. `base` specifies that the `base_dn` is a group object and that it is the only group considered.
`unmapped_groups_as_roles`	no	Specifies whether the names of any unmapped LDAP groups should be used as role names and assigned to the user. Defaults to `false`.
`files.role_mapping`	no	Specifies the path and file name of the YAML role mapping configuration file. Defaults to `CONF_DIR/shield/users/role_mapping.yml`, where `CONF_DIR` is `ES_HOME/config` (zip/tar installations) or `/etc/elasticsearch` (package installations).
`follow_referrals`	no	Specifies whether Shield should follow referrals returned by the LDAP server. Referrals are URLs returned by the server that are to be used to continue the LDAP operation (such as `search`). Defaults to `true`.
`hostname_verification`	no	Specifies whether hostname verification is performed when connecting to an LDAP server. When `true`, the hostname or IP address used in the `url` must match one of the names in the certificate or the connection will not be allowed. Due to its potential security impact, `hostname_verification` is not exposed via the nodes info API. Defaults to `true`.
`cache.ttl`	no	Specifies the time-to-live for cached user entries. A user’s credentials are cached for this period of time. Specify the time period using the standard Elasticsearch time units. Defaults to `20m`.
`cache.max_users`	no	Specifies the maximum number of user entries that can be stored in the cache at one time. Defaults to 100,000.
`cache.hash_algo`	no	Specifies the hashing algorithm that is used for the cached user credentials. See Cache hash algorithms for the possible values. (Expert Setting)

Assigning Active Directory Users and Groups to Roles

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To configure privileges for Active Directory users and groups, you assign them to roles in the role mapping file stored on each node. You specify users and groups using their distinguished names. For example, the following mapping configuration assigns the Active Directory admins group both the monitoring and user roles, and assigns the user role to the users group and John Doe.

monitoring: 
  - "cn=admins,dc=example,dc=com" 
user:
  - "cn=users,dc=example,dc=com" 
  - "cn=admins,dc=example,dc=com"
  - "cn=John Doe,cn=contractors,dc=example,dc=com"

	The name of a role defined in `roles.yml`.
	The distinguished name of the `admins` group.
	The distinguished name of the `users` group.
	The distinguished name of the user `John Doe`.

For more information, see Mapping Users and Groups to Roles.

Encrypting Communications Between Shield and Active Directory with SSL/TLS

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You should encrypt communications between Shield and Active Directory to protect the user credentials that are sent to Active Directory for authentication. Connecting via SSL/TLS ensures that the identity of the Active Directory server is authenticated before Shield transmits the user credentials, and the user names and passwords are encrypted in transit.

To encrypt communications between Shield and Active Directory:

Configure each node to trust certificates signed by the CA that signed your Active Directory server certificates. For example, the following command imports cacert.pem into node01’s keystore. (For information about using truststores, see Configuring a Separate Truststore.)
```
cd CONFIG_DIR/shield
keytool -importcert -keystore node01.jks -file cacert.pem -alias ad_ca
```
The CA cert must be a PEM encoded certificate.
You can also import the individual server certificates rather than the CA certificate, but this is only recommended if you have a single Active Directory server. You can fetch the Active Directory server certificate with openssl. For example, the following command gets the certificate for ad.example.com and stores it locally in ldap.crt.
```
echo | openssl s_client -connect ad.example.com:636 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 > ldap.crt
```
If you are using an older version of openssl you might need to use use the -host and -port options rather than the -connect option.

If you haven’t already configured the path to the node’s keystore or truststore in elasticsearch.yml, set the shield.ssl.keystore.path or shield.ssl.truststore.path attributes. For example:

shield.ssl.keystore.path:          /home/es/config/shield/node01.jks 
shield.ssl.keystore.password:      myPass 
shield.ssl.keystore.key_password:  myKeyPass

	The full path to the node keystore file. This must be a location within the Elasticsearch configuration directory.
	The password used to access the keystore.
	The password used to access the certificate. This is only required if you specified a separate certificate password when generating the certificate.

For more information, see Enabling SSL/TLS in the Node Configuration.

Set the url attribute in the realm configuration to specify the LDAPS protocol and the secure port number. For example, url: ldaps://ad.example.com:636.
Restart Elasticsearch to pick up the changes to elasticsearch.yml.

By default, when you configure Shield to connect to Active Directory using SSL/TLS, Shield attempts to verify the hostname or IP address specified with the url attribute in the realm configuration with the values in the certificate. If the values in the certificate and realm configuration do not match, Shield does not allow a connection to the Active Directory server. This is done to protect against man in the middle attacks. If necessary, you can disable this behavior by setting the hostname_verification property to false.

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