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.

You must configure Kibana to encrypt communications between the browser and the Kibana server to prevent user passwords from being sent in the clear. If are using SSL/TLS to encrypt traffic to and from the nodes in your Elasticsearch cluster, you must also configure Kibana to connect to Elasticsearch via HTTPS.

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 file 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 or Active Directory 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"
```
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 user roles from the example my_kibana_user 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. Users also need access to the kibana-devnull index. The example my_kibana_user role grants read access to the indices that match the logstash-* pattern and full access to the .kibana index, which is required.

You can define as many different roles for your Kibana users as you need.

For example, the following my_kibana_user role only allows users to discover and visualize data in the logstash-* indices.
```
my_kibana_user:
  cluster:
      - monitor
  indices:
    - names: 'logstash-*'
      privileges:
        - view_index_metadata
        - read
    - names: '.kibana*' 
      privileges:
        - manage
        - read
        - index
```
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 native realm, you can assign roles using the User Management API. For example, the following creates a user named jacknich and assigns it the kibana_monitoring role:
```
POST /_shield/user/jacknich
{
  "password" : "t0pS3cr3t",
  "roles" : [ "kibana_monitoring" ]
}
```
- 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 kibana_monitoring role to the group named admins and the user named Jack Nicholson:
```
kibana_monitoring:
  - "cn=admins,dc=example,dc=com"
  - "cn=Jack Nicholson,dc=example,dc=com"
```
If you have enabled SSL encryption in Shield, configure Kibana 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 to encrypt communications between the browser and the Kibana server. To do this, set 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/2.3.5
```
  To perform an offline install, download the Shield plugin from http://download.elastic.co/kibana/shield/shield-2.3.5.tar.gz (sha1) and run bin/kibana plugin --install shield --url file:///path/to/file/shield-2.3.5.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 example my_kibana_user user role. Kibana server credentials should only be used internally by the Kibana server. The kibana4_server role doesn’t grant permission to access user indices.

Shield UI Settings

edit

Name	Default	Description
`shield.encryptionKey`	-	An arbitrary string to use as the encryption key. Required.
`shield.sessionTimeout`	1800000 ms (30 minutes)	Sets the session duration.
`shield.skipSslCheck`	`false`	Advanced setting. Set to `true` to enable Kibana to start if `server.ssl.cert` and `server.ssl.key` are not specified in `kibana.yml`. This should only be used if SSL is configured outside of Kibana—for example, you are routing requests through a load balancer or proxy. You must still connect to the Kibana server via HTTPS when using the Shield UI plugin. If you attempt to access Kibana via HTTP, you’ll be stuck at the login screen indefinitely.

Default Roles for Kibana

edit

A default role for the Kibana server is provided in roles.yml.

Kibana Server Role.

kibana4_server:
  cluster:
      - monitor
  indices:
    - names: '.kibana'
      privileges:
        - all

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