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sec-design.md

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BUSINESS POSTURE

  • Business Priorities and Goals:
  • Automate infrastructure management and configuration.
  • Ensure consistent system configurations across environments.
  • Improve operational efficiency and reduce manual tasks.
  • Enable rapid and reliable deployments.
  • Enhance system security and compliance through automated configuration enforcement.
  • Business Risks:
  • Misconfiguration leading to system instability or security vulnerabilities.
  • Unauthorized access to sensitive systems and data through mismanaged configurations.
  • Data breaches due to insecure configuration practices.
  • Disruption of critical services due to configuration errors.
  • Compliance violations resulting from inconsistent or non-compliant configurations.

SECURITY POSTURE

  • Existing Security Controls:
  • security control: Code review process for contributions (described in GitHub repository contribution guidelines).
  • security control: Regular security audits and vulnerability scanning (Salt project publicly announces security advisories).
  • security control: Cryptographic functions for secure communication between Salt Master and Minions (implemented in Salt codebase).
  • security control: Authentication mechanisms for Salt Master and Minions (implemented in Salt codebase, e.g., keys, PAM).
  • security control: Authorization mechanisms to control access to Salt functions and data (implemented in Salt codebase, e.g., ACLs, policies).
  • Accepted Risks:
  • accepted risk: Potential vulnerabilities in third-party dependencies.
  • accepted risk: Risk of misconfiguration by users leading to security issues.
  • accepted risk: Open-source nature implies publicly known codebase, potentially easing vulnerability discovery for attackers.
  • Recommended Security Controls:
  • security control: Implement automated security scanning in the CI/CD pipeline (SAST, DAST, dependency scanning).
  • security control: Enforce multi-factor authentication for access to Salt Master and related infrastructure.
  • security control: Implement secrets management solution for handling sensitive data within Salt configurations.
  • security control: Regularly review and update security configurations and policies.
  • security control: Conduct penetration testing to identify potential vulnerabilities in deployed Salt infrastructure.
  • Security Requirements:
  • Authentication:
  • Requirement: Secure authentication mechanism for Salt Master and Minions to establish trusted communication.
  • Requirement: Support for various authentication methods (e.g., key-based, certificate-based, PAM).
  • Requirement: Strong password policies and enforcement if password-based authentication is used.
  • Requirement: Consider multi-factor authentication for administrative access to Salt Master.
  • Authorization:
  • Requirement: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage permissions for users and services interacting with Salt.
  • Requirement: Granular authorization policies to control access to specific Salt functions, states, and data.
  • Requirement: Principle of least privilege should be applied to all access controls.
  • Input Validation:
  • Requirement: Validate all inputs to Salt Master and Minions to prevent injection attacks (e.g., command injection, YAML injection).
  • Requirement: Sanitize user-provided data in Salt states and modules to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities if web interfaces are exposed.
  • Requirement: Input validation should be performed on both the client-side (Salt CLI, API) and server-side (Salt Master, Minion).
  • Cryptography:
  • Requirement: Use strong encryption algorithms for communication between Salt Master and Minions (e.g., AES).
  • Requirement: Securely store and manage cryptographic keys used for authentication and encryption.
  • Requirement: Implement cryptographic hashing for data integrity checks.
  • Requirement: Follow best practices for cryptographic key generation, rotation, and revocation.

DESIGN

C4 CONTEXT

graph LR
    subgraph "Organization Infrastructure"
        A["Salt Project"]
    end
    B["System Administrators"]:::person -- "Manages Infrastructure using Salt" --> A
    C["Developers"]:::person -- "Automate Application Deployment using Salt" --> A
    D["Servers/VMs/Containers"] -- "Managed by Salt" --> A
    E["Cloud Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP)"] -- "Provisioned and Managed by Salt" --> A
    F["Monitoring Systems (Prometheus, Grafana)"] -- "Collect Metrics from Salt Managed Systems" --> D
    G["Configuration Management Database (CMDB)"] -- "Updates Configuration Data based on Salt States" --> A
    classDef person fill:#ccf
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  • Context Diagram Elements:
  • Element:
  • Name: System Administrators
  • Type: Person
  • Description: IT professionals responsible for managing and maintaining the organization's infrastructure.
  • Responsibilities: Use Salt to automate system configuration, patching, and management tasks.
  • Security controls: Role-based access control to Salt Master, multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts, audit logging of actions.
  • Element:
  • Name: Developers
  • Type: Person
  • Description: Software developers who deploy and manage applications on the infrastructure.
  • Responsibilities: Use Salt to automate application deployments, environment provisioning, and configuration management for applications.
  • Security controls: Role-based access control to Salt Master, potentially limited access compared to System Administrators, audit logging of actions.
  • Element:
  • Name: Servers/VMs/Containers
  • Type: System
  • Description: Physical servers, virtual machines, and containers that are managed and configured by Salt.
  • Responsibilities: Run applications and services, execute Salt states and commands, report system status to Salt Master.
  • Security controls: Salt Minion for secure communication with Salt Master, access control lists managed by Salt, security hardening applied by Salt states.
  • Element:
  • Name: Cloud Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Type: System
  • Description: Cloud infrastructure platforms used by the organization.
  • Responsibilities: Provide infrastructure resources (compute, storage, networking) that are provisioned and managed by Salt.
  • Security controls: Cloud provider security controls (IAM, security groups, network policies), Salt states for configuring cloud resources securely.
  • Element:
  • Name: Monitoring Systems (Prometheus, Grafana)
  • Type: System
  • Description: Systems used for monitoring the health and performance of the infrastructure and applications.
  • Responsibilities: Collect metrics and logs from Salt-managed systems to provide visibility and alerts.
  • Security controls: Secure API access for data collection, potentially integrated with Salt for automated monitoring configuration.
  • Element:
  • Name: Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
  • Type: System
  • Description: A database that stores information about the organization's IT infrastructure and configurations.
  • Responsibilities: Provide a central repository for configuration data, potentially updated by Salt based on managed system states.
  • Security controls: Access control to CMDB data, secure API for integration with Salt, data validation to ensure data integrity.
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt Project
  • Type: Software System
  • Description: SaltStack configuration management and automation software.
  • Responsibilities: Centralized configuration management, automation of tasks across infrastructure, enforcement of desired system states.
  • Security controls: Authentication and authorization mechanisms, secure communication protocols, input validation, security scanning in development, regular security updates.

C4 CONTAINER

graph LR
    subgraph "Salt Project"
        A["Salt Master"]
        B["Salt Minion"]
        C["Salt API"]
        D["External Authentication Providers (LDAP, Active Directory)"]
        E["Database (e.g., Redis, PostgreSQL)"]
        F["File Server (e.g., Git, Salt Fileserver)"]
    end
    B -- "Secure Command & Control" --> A
    C -- "API Requests" --> A
    A -- "Authentication" --> D
    A -- "State Data, Job Data" --> E
    A -- "Configuration Files, States" --> F
    B -- "Configuration Files, States" --> F
    B -- "System Metrics, Logs" --> A
    C -- "User Interface (Web UI or CLI)" --> B
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  • Container Diagram Elements:
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt Master
  • Type: Container/Application
  • Description: The central control point of Salt, responsible for managing minions, distributing configurations, and executing commands.
  • Responsibilities: Authenticate minions and API clients, store configuration data, schedule and execute jobs, manage state and configuration distribution.
  • Security controls: Authentication mechanisms (keys, PAM, external providers), authorization policies (ACLs, RBAC), secure communication with minions and API clients, input validation, audit logging.
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt Minion
  • Type: Container/Application
  • Description: Agent installed on managed systems, responsible for executing commands and applying configurations received from the Salt Master.
  • Responsibilities: Authenticate to Salt Master, receive and execute commands and states, report system status, manage local system configuration.
  • Security controls: Authentication to Salt Master, secure communication channel, restricted privileges, input validation, local audit logging.
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt API
  • Type: Container/Application
  • Description: REST API for interacting with the Salt Master, allowing programmatic access to Salt functionality.
  • Responsibilities: Provide an API for external systems and users to manage Salt, trigger jobs, retrieve data, and integrate with other tools.
  • Security controls: API authentication and authorization (API keys, tokens, external providers), rate limiting, input validation, secure communication (HTTPS), audit logging.
  • Element:
  • Name: External Authentication Providers (LDAP, Active Directory)
  • Type: External System
  • Description: External systems used for user authentication and authorization in Salt.
  • Responsibilities: Authenticate users and services accessing Salt Master and API, provide user and group information for authorization policies.
  • Security controls: Existing security controls of the external authentication providers, secure integration with Salt (e.g., secure protocols, credential management).
  • Element:
  • Name: Database (e.g., Redis, PostgreSQL)
  • Type: Data Store
  • Description: Database used by Salt Master to store state data, job information, and other persistent data.
  • Responsibilities: Persist Salt data, provide data access for Salt Master, ensure data integrity and availability.
  • Security controls: Database access control, encryption at rest and in transit, regular backups, security hardening of the database server.
  • Element:
  • Name: File Server (e.g., Git, Salt Fileserver)
  • Type: Data Store
  • Description: System used to store Salt states, configuration files, and other resources.
  • Responsibilities: Store and serve configuration files to Salt Master and Minions, version control of configurations (if Git is used).
  • Security controls: Access control to configuration files, secure access protocols (HTTPS, SSH), version control and audit logging of changes.

DEPLOYMENT

  • Deployment Options:

  • On-Premise Deployment: Salt Master and Minions deployed within the organization's own data centers.

  • Cloud Deployment: Salt Master and Minions deployed on cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).

  • Hybrid Deployment: Combination of on-premise and cloud deployments, with Salt managing resources across both environments.

  • Detailed Deployment (Cloud Deployment - AWS):

graph LR
    subgraph "AWS VPC"
        subgraph "Public Subnet"
            A["Salt Master EC2 Instance"]:::ec2
            B["Load Balancer"]:::elb
        end
        subgraph "Private Subnet"
            C["Salt Minion EC2 Instances"]:::ec2
            D["RDS Instance (PostgreSQL)"]:::rds
        end
        B -- "HTTPS (443)" --> A
        A -- "Salt Protocol (4505, 4506)" --> C
        A -- "Database Access" --> D
    end
    E["Internet"] -- "HTTPS (443)" --> B
    classDef ec2 fill:#f9f,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
    classDef elb fill:#ccf,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
    classDef rds fill:#afa,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
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  • Deployment Diagram Elements:
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt Master EC2 Instance
  • Type: EC2 Instance
  • Description: An EC2 instance in a public subnet running the Salt Master software.
  • Responsibilities: Central control point for Salt, manages minions, API endpoint.
  • Security controls: Security groups to restrict inbound and outbound traffic, IAM roles for access to AWS resources, OS-level security hardening, Salt Master security controls.
  • Element:
  • Name: Load Balancer
  • Type: Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
  • Description: AWS Load Balancer in a public subnet, distributing traffic to the Salt Master instance (for API access).
  • Responsibilities: Load balancing API requests to Salt Master, providing a single entry point for API access, TLS termination.
  • Security controls: HTTPS listener, security groups to restrict access, TLS certificate management.
  • Element:
  • Name: Salt Minion EC2 Instances
  • Type: EC2 Instances
  • Description: EC2 instances in a private subnet running Salt Minion software, managed by the Salt Master.
  • Responsibilities: Execute commands and states from Salt Master, report system status.
  • Security controls: Security groups to restrict inbound traffic (only from Salt Master), IAM roles (if needed), OS-level security hardening, Salt Minion security controls.
  • Element:
  • Name: RDS Instance (PostgreSQL)
  • Type: Relational Database Service (RDS)
  • Description: AWS RDS instance running PostgreSQL, used as the database for Salt Master.
  • Responsibilities: Store Salt state data, job information, and other persistent data.
  • Security controls: RDS security groups to restrict access (only from Salt Master), encryption at rest and in transit, database access control, regular backups.
  • Element:
  • Name: Internet
  • Type: Network
  • Description: Public internet, used by administrators and external systems to access the Salt API via the Load Balancer.
  • Responsibilities: Provide network connectivity for API access.
  • Security controls: Public access is limited to HTTPS on port 443, Load Balancer and Salt API authentication and authorization.

BUILD

graph LR
    A["Developer"] -- "Code Changes, States" --> B["Version Control System (Git)"]
    B -- "Code Push" --> C["CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions)"]
    C -- "Build, Test, Security Scans" --> D["Build Artifacts (Packages, Images)"]
    D -- "Publish" --> E["Artifact Repository (Package Registry, Container Registry)"]
    E -- "Deploy" --> F["Deployment Environment"]
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  • Build Process:

  • Developer commits code changes (Salt states, modules, code) to a Version Control System (e.g., Git).

  • Code push to the repository triggers the CI/CD pipeline (e.g., GitHub Actions).

  • CI/CD pipeline performs the following steps:

  • Build: Compile code, package Salt components, build container images.

  • Test: Run unit tests, integration tests, and potentially security tests.

  • Security Scans: Perform static application security testing (SAST), dependency scanning, and linting.

  • Build artifacts (packages, container images, etc.) are created.

  • Artifacts are published to an artifact repository (package registry, container registry).

  • Deployment process retrieves artifacts from the repository and deploys them to the target environment.

  • Build Diagram Elements:

  • Element:

  • Name: Developer

  • Type: Person

  • Description: Software developer contributing to the Salt project or creating custom Salt states and modules.

  • Responsibilities: Write code, create Salt states, commit changes to version control.

  • Security controls: Local development environment security, code review process.

  • Element:

  • Name: Version Control System (Git)

  • Type: Software System

  • Description: Git repository hosting Salt project code and configurations.

  • Responsibilities: Version control, code collaboration, change tracking, trigger CI/CD pipeline.

  • Security controls: Access control to repository, branch protection, commit signing, audit logging.

  • Element:

  • Name: CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions)

  • Type: Automation System

  • Description: Automated CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions (or similar tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI).

  • Responsibilities: Automated build, test, security scans, artifact creation, and publishing.

  • Security controls: Secure pipeline configuration, secrets management for credentials, vulnerability scanning of pipeline components, audit logging.

  • Element:

  • Name: Build Artifacts (Packages, Images)

  • Type: Data Artifacts

  • Description: Output of the build process, including installable packages (RPM, DEB), container images, and other distributable artifacts.

  • Responsibilities: Provide deployable units of Salt components and configurations.

  • Security controls: Signing of artifacts, integrity checks, vulnerability scanning of artifacts.

  • Element:

  • Name: Artifact Repository (Package Registry, Container Registry)

  • Type: Data Store

  • Description: Repository for storing and distributing build artifacts (e.g., GitHub Packages, Docker Registry, Artifactory).

  • Responsibilities: Securely store and distribute build artifacts, version control of artifacts, access control to artifacts.

  • Security controls: Access control to repository, secure storage, vulnerability scanning of repository, audit logging.

  • Element:

  • Name: Deployment Environment

  • Type: Environment

  • Description: Target environment where Salt components are deployed (e.g., cloud infrastructure, on-premise data center).

  • Responsibilities: Run Salt Master and Minions, execute Salt states and commands.

  • Security controls: Environment-specific security controls (network security, access control, OS hardening), Salt security controls.

RISK ASSESSMENT

  • Critical Business Processes:
  • Infrastructure provisioning and management.
  • Application deployment and configuration.
  • System patching and updates.
  • Compliance and security policy enforcement.
  • Incident response and remediation.
  • Data Sensitivity:
  • Configuration data: Medium to High sensitivity (may contain system configurations, application settings, network configurations).
  • Secrets (passwords, API keys, certificates): High sensitivity (critical for system and application security).
  • System logs and audit trails: Medium sensitivity (important for security monitoring and incident investigation).
  • Job data and state information: Low to Medium sensitivity (operational data, may contain some configuration details).

QUESTIONS & ASSUMPTIONS

  • Questions:
  • What specific authentication methods are currently used for Salt Master and Minions in the target environment?
  • What authorization policies are in place to control access to Salt functionality?
  • Is there an existing secrets management solution that Salt needs to integrate with?
  • What are the specific compliance requirements that Salt needs to help address?
  • What is the expected scale and performance requirements for the Salt deployment?
  • Assumptions:
  • BUSINESS POSTURE: The primary business goal is to improve operational efficiency and security through automation.
  • SECURITY POSTURE: Security is a high priority, and the organization is willing to invest in security controls. Secure software development lifecycle practices are generally followed.
  • DESIGN: Salt will be deployed in a cloud environment (AWS), using PostgreSQL as the database. Salt API will be exposed for external integrations. GitHub Actions is used for CI/CD.