Using Kibana with Shield

Kibana users have to authenticate when your cluster has Shield installed. You configure Shield roles for your Kibana users to control what data those users can access. Kibana runs a webserver that makes requests to Elasticsearch on the client’s behalf, so you also need to configure credentials for the Kibana server so those requests can be authenticated. In addition, you can encrypt communications between the Kibana server and Elasticsearch.

If you are using Kibana 3, you must use Shield 1.3, which is compatible with Elasticsearch 1.5+. For more information, see Using Kibana 3 with Shield.

With Shield installed, if you load a Kibana dashboard that accesses data in an index that you are not authorized to view, you get an error that indicates the index does not exist. Kibana and Shield do not currently provide a way to control which users can load which dashboards.

To use Kibana with Shield:

Configure credentials for the Kibana server. The Kibana server needs access to the cluster monitoring APIs and the .kibana index. The server does not need access to user indexes. The required privileges are specified in the kibana4_server role provided in the default Shield roles.yml file.
1. Create a user account for the Kibana server and assign it the kibana4_server role. For example, if you’re using the default esusers realm, you can create a kibana-server user with the useradd command:
```
esusers useradd kibana4-server -r kibana4_server -p password
```
  If you are using an LDAP, Active Directory, or PKI realm, you need to create a user for the Kibana server and map the user’s distinguished name to the kibana4_server role in the Shield role mapping file. By default, role mappings are stored in config/shield/role_mapping.yml. For example, the following snippet assigns the kibana4_server role to an LDAP or Active Directory user named kibana-server:
```
kibana4_server:
  - "cn=kibana-server,cn=applications,dc=example,dc=com"
```
  For PKI realms, you specify the user’s common name, organizational unit, and organization:
```
kibana4_server:
  - "cn=kibana-server,ou=example,o=com"
```
2. Specify the credentials for your Kibana server user in the Kibana configuration file, /config/kibana.yml.
```
elasticsearch.username: kibana4-server
elasticsearch.password: password
```
Derive Kibana 4 user roles from the default kibana4 user role and add them to roles.yml to control which indices your Kibana users can access. Kibana users need access to the indices that they will be working with and the .kibana index where their saved searches, visualizations, and dashboards are stored. The default kibana4 role grants read access to all indices and full access to the .kibana index. Users also need access to the .kibana-devnull index.

We strongly recommend creating custom kibana4 user roles to limit access to specific indices according to your organization’s goals and policies. You can define as many different roles for your Kibana 4 users as you need.

To constrain Kibana’s access to specific indices, explicitly specify the index names in your role. When configuring a role for a Kibana user and granting access to a specific index, at a minimum the user needs the following privileges on the index:
```
indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
indices:admin/validate/query
indices:data/read/search
indices:data/read/msearch
indices:data/read/field_stats
indices:admin/get
```
For example, the following my_kibana_user role only allows users to discover and visualize data in the logstash-* indices.
```
my_kibana_user:
  cluster:
      - cluster:monitor/nodes/info
      - cluster:monitor/health
  indices:
    'logstash-*':
      - indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
      - indices:admin/validate/query
      - indices:data/read/search
      - indices:data/read/msearch
      - indices:data/read/field_stats
      - indices:admin/get
    '.kibana*': 
      - indices:admin/create
      - indices:admin/exists
      - indices:admin/mapping/put
      - indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
      - indices:admin/refresh
      - indices:admin/validate/query
      - indices:data/read/get
      - indices:data/read/mget
      - indices:data/read/search
      - indices:data/read/msearch
      - indices:data/write/delete
      - indices:data/write/index
      - indices:data/write/update
```
All Kibana users need access to the .kibana and .kibana-devnull indices.
Assign the appropriate roles to your Kibana users or groups of users:
- If you’re using the default esusers realm, you can assign roles when you add a user, or modify the role assignments with the roles command. For example, the following command creates a user named jacknich and assigns the kibana4_monitoring role:
```
esusers useradd jacknich -r kibana4_monitoring -p password
```
- If you are using an LDAP or Active Directory realm, you can either assign roles on a per user basis, or assign roles to groups of users. By default, role mappings are stored in config/shield/role_mapping.yml. For example, the following snippet assigns the kibana4_monitoring role to the group named admins and the user named Jack Nicholson:
```
kibana4_monitoring:
  - "cn=admins,dc=example,dc=com"
  - "cn=Jack Nicholson,dc=example,dc=com"
```
If you have enabled SSL encryption in Shield, configure Kibana 4 to connect to Elasticsearch via HTTPS. To do this:
1. Specify the HTTPS protocol in the elasticsearch.url setting in the Kibana configuration file, kibana.yml:
```
elasticsearch.url: "https://<your_elasticsearch_host>.com:9200"
```
2. If you are using your own CA to sign certificates for Elasticsearch, set the elasticsearch.ssl.ca setting in kibana.yml to specify the location of the PEM file.
```
elasticsearch.ssl.ca: /path/to/your/cacert.pem
```
Configure Kibana 4 to encrypt communications between the browser and the Kibana server. To do this, configure the server.ssl.key and server.ssl.cert properties in kibana.yml:
```
server.ssl.key: /path/to/your/server.key
server.ssl.cert: /path/to/your/server.crt
```
Once you enable SSL encryption between the browser and the Kibana server, access Kibana via HTTPS. For example, https://localhost:5601.

Enabling browser encryption is required to prevent passing user credentials in the clear.
Install the Shield plugin into Kibana. The Shield plugin secures user sessions and enables users to log in and out of Kibana. To install the Shield plugin:
1. Run the following command in your Kibana installation directory to install the Shield plugin.
```
bin/kibana plugin --install kibana/shield/2.2.1
```
  To perform an offline install, download the Shield plugin from http://download.elastic.co/kibana/shield/shield-2.2.1.tar.gz (sha1) and run bin/kibana plugin --install shield --url file:///path/to/file/shield-2.2.1.tar.gz.
2. Set the shield.encryptionKey property in the kibana.yml configuration file. You can use any text string as the encryption key.
```
shield.encryptionKey: "something_secret"
```
3. To change the default session duration, set the shield.sessionTimeout property in the kibana.yml configuration file. By default, sessions expire after 30 minutes. The timeout is specified in milliseconds. For example, set the timeout to 600000 to expire sessions after 10 minutes:
```
shield.sessionTimeout: 600000
```
Restart Kibana and verify that you can sign in as a user. If you are running Kibana locally, go to https://localhost:5601 and enter the credentials for a user you’ve assigned a Kibana user role. For example, you could log in as the jacknich user created in step 3.

This must be a user who has been assigned a role derived from the default kibana4 user role. Kibana server credentials should only be used internally by the Kibana server. The kibana4_server role doesn’t grant permission to create the .kibana index or access user indices.

Default Roles for Kibana

edit

Default roles for Kibana 4 are provided in roles.yml.

The default user role grants read access to all indices. We strongly recommend deriving custom roles for your Kibana users that limit access to specific indices according to your organization’s goals and policies.

Kibana 4 User Role.

kibana4:
  cluster:
      - cluster:monitor/nodes/info
      - cluster:monitor/health
  indices:
    '*':
      - indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
      - indices:admin/validate/query
      - indices:data/read/search
      - indices:data/read/msearch
      - indices:admin/get
   '.kibana*':
      - indices:admin/create
      - indices:admin/exists
      - indices:admin/mapping/put
      - indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
      - indices:admin/refresh
      - indices:admin/validate/query
      - indices:data/read/get
      - indices:data/read/mget
      - indices:data/read/search
      - indices:data/read/msearch
      - indices:data/write/delete
      - indices:data/write/index
      - indices:data/write/update

Kibana 4 Server Role.

kibana4_server:
  cluster:
      - cluster:monitor/nodes/info
      - cluster:monitor/health
  indices:
    '.kibana':
      - indices:admin/create
      - indices:admin/exists
      - indices:admin/mapping/put
      - indices:admin/mappings/fields/get
      - indices:admin/refresh
      - indices:admin/validate/query
      - indices:data/read/get
      - indices:data/read/mget
      - indices:data/read/search
      - indices:data/write/delete
      - indices:data/write/index
      - indices:data/write/update

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