README.md

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Venafi ssh_ca Role for Ansible

This role adds SSH Certificate Authority public key retrieval capabilities to Red Hat Ansible by seamlessly integrating with the Venafi Trust Protection Platform in a manner that ensures compliance with corporate security policy and provides visibility into certificate issuance enterprise wide.

Requirements

Review the Venafi prerequisites, then install Ansible and VCert-Python (v0.12.5 or higher) using pip:

pip install ansible vcert --upgrade

Using with Ansible Galaxy

For more information about Ansible Galaxy, go to https://galaxy.ansible.com/docs/using/installing.html

1. Install the Machine Identity Collection from Ansible Galaxy:

   ansible-galaxy collection install venafi.machine_identity

2. Create the credentials.yml and populate it with connection parameters:

   Trust Protection Platform:

   cat <<EOF >>credentials.yml
   access_token: 'p0WTt3sDPbzm2BDIkoJROQ=='
   url: 'https://tpp.venafi.example.com'
   trust_bundle: "/path/to/bundle.pem"
   EOF

   Venafi as a Service:

   NOTE: as of now, VaaS does not support SSH certificates.

   The certificate role supports the following connection and credential settings:

   Variable Name	Description
   test_mode	When "true", the role operates without connecting to Trust Protection Platform or Venafi as a Service
   access_token	Trust Protection Platform access token for the "ansible-by-venafi" API Application
   user	[DEPRECATED] Trust Protection Platform WebSDK username, use access_token if possible
   password	[DEPRECATED] Trust Protection Platform WebSDK password, use access_token if possible
   trust_bundle	Text file containing trust anchor certificates in PEM (text) format, generally required for Trust Protection Platform
   url	Venafi service URL (e.g. "https://tpp.venafi.example"), generally only applicable to Trust Protection Platform

3. Use ansible-vault to encrypt the credentials.yml file using a password. This is optional but highly recommended. As long as you know the password you can always decrypt the file to make changes and then re-encrypt it. Go to https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/vault.html for more information.

   ansible-vault encrypt credentials.yml

4. Write a simple playbook called, for example, ssh_ca_sample.yml.

   - name: Sample SSH CA public key playbook
     hosts: localhost
     roles: 
       - role: venafi.machine_identity.ssh_ca
         ssh_ca_public_key_path: "/tmp/etc/ssh/ca/ca-pubkey-file.pub"
         ssh_ca_template: "\\VED\\Certificate Authority\\SSH\\Templates\\my-ssh-cit"

5. Run the playbook.

   ansible-playbook ssh_ca_sample.yml --ask-vault-pass

   Running the playbook will generate an SSH CA public key and place it into folder in /tmp/etc/ssh/ca directory.

   The --ask-vault-pass parameter is needed if you encrypted the credentials.yml file.

Additional playbook variables can be added to specify properties of the and to override default behaviors.

cat variables.yml

The following is the list of variables accepted by the ssh_ca role:

Variable Name	Description
credentials_file	Name of the file containing Venafi credentials and connection settings. Default: credentials.yml
ssh_ca_dir	Local parent directory where the cryptographic assets will be stored. Default: "/etc/ssh/{{ ssh_ca_public_key_id }}"
ssh_ca_force	Execute the task regardless of changes. Default: false
ssh_ca_public_key_filename	The name of the file where the CA public key will be stored, with no file extension. Default: "{{ ansible_fqdn }}"
ssh_ca_public_key_path	Local directory where the CA public key file will be stored. Default: "{{ ssh_ca_dir }}/{{ ssh_ca_public_key_id }}.pub"
ssh_ca_remote_execution	Specifies whether cryptographic assets will be generated remotely, or locally and then provisioned to the remote host. Default: false
ssh_ca_remote_public_key_path	Directory on remote host where CA public key file will be stored Default: "{{ ssh_ca_dir }}/{{ ssh_ca_public_key_id }}.pub"
ssh_ca_template	The Domain Name of the SSH Certificate Authority whom the public key is being retrieved. Required if ssh_ca_guid not provided
ssh_ca_guid	The GUID of the SSH Certificate Authority whom the public key is being retrieved. Required if ssh_ca_template not provided
ssh_ca_windows_cert	Indicates that the public key is intended to be used in a Windows environment. Break Lines and Carriage Returns will be adjusted accordingly to work on Windows. Default: false

Defaults are defined in the defaults/main.yml file.

Sample Playbook

- hosts: servers
  roles:
    - role: "venafi.machine_identity.ssh_ca"
      # Required values for SSH Certificate Authority public key retrieval
      ssh_ca_template: "\\VED\\Certificate Authority\\SSH\\Templates\\my-test-cit"
      # Local files
      ssh_ca_dir: "/ansible/ssh/ca"
      ssh_ca_public_key_path: "{{ ssh_ca_dir }}/public_key_filename.pub"
      # Where to execute venafi_ssh_ca module. If set to false, CA public key will be
      # created on ansible master host and then copied to the remote server.
      ssh_ca_remote_execution: false
      # Remote location where to place the CA public key.
      ssh_remote_ca_dir: "/etc/ssh"
      ssh_remote_public_key_path: "{{ ssh_remote_ca_dir }}/remote_public_key_filename.pub"

For more information about using roles go to https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html

License

Copyright © Venafi, Inc. All rights reserved.

This solution is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

Please direct questions/comments to [email protected].