Hanzo
PlatformHanzo KMSPlatformIdentities

Alibaba Cloud Auth

Learn how to authenticate with Hanzo KMS using Alibaba Cloud user accounts.

Alibaba Cloud Auth is an authentication method that verifies Alibaba Cloud users through signature validation, allowing secure access to Hanzo KMS resources.

Diagram

The following sequence diagram illustrates the Alibaba Cloud Auth workflow for authenticating Alibaba Cloud users with Hanzo KMS.

sequenceDiagram
  participant Client
  participant Hanzo KMS
  participant Alibaba Cloud

  Note over Client,Client: Step 1: Sign user identity request

  Note over Client,Hanzo KMS: Step 2: Login Operation
  Client->>Hanzo KMS: Send signed request details to /api/v1/auth/alicloud-auth/login

  Note over Hanzo KMS,Alibaba Cloud: Step 3: Request verification
  Hanzo KMS->>Alibaba Cloud: Forward signed request
  Alibaba Cloud-->>Hanzo KMS: Return user details

  Note over Hanzo KMS: Step 4: Identity property validation
  Hanzo KMS->>Client: Return short-lived access token

  Note over Client,Hanzo KMS: Step 5: Access Hanzo KMS API with token
  Client->>Hanzo KMS: Make authenticated requests using the short-lived access token

Concept

At a high level, Hanzo KMS authenticates an Alibaba Cloud user by verifying its identity and checking that it meets specific requirements (e.g., its ARN is whitelisted) at the /api/v1/auth/alicloud-auth/login endpoint. If successful, then Hanzo KMS returns a short-lived access token that can be used to make authenticated requests to the Hanzo KMS API.

To be more specific:

  1. The client signs a GetCallerIdentity request using an Alibaba Cloud user's access key secret; this is done using an HMAC sha1 algorithm.
  2. The client sends the signed request information alongside the signature to Hanzo KMS at the /api/v1/auth/alicloud-auth/login endpoint.
  3. Hanzo KMS reconstructs the request and sends it to Alibaba Cloud for verification and obtains the identity associated with the Alibaba Cloud user.
  4. Hanzo KMS checks the user's properties against set criteria such as Allowed ARNs.
  5. If all checks pass, Hanzo KMS returns a short-lived access token that the client can use to make authenticated requests to the Hanzo KMS API.

Prerequisite

In order to sign requests, you must have an Alibaba Cloud user with credentials such as access key ID and secret. If you're unaware of how to create a user and obtain the needed credentials, expand the menu below.

Visit https://ram.console.aliyun.com/users to get to the Users page and click Create User.

Users Page

Fill out the username and display name with values of your choice and click OK.

User Info

After a user has been created, click on its row to see user information.

User Info

Click Create AccessKey and select the most relevant option for your use-case. Then click Continue.

User Info

Save the displayed credentials for later steps.

User Info

Guide

In the following steps, we explore how to create and use identities for your workloads and applications on Alibaba Cloud to access the Hanzo KMS API using request signing.

Creating an identity

To create an identity, head to your Organization Settings > Access Control > Identities and press Create identity.

identities organization

When creating an identity, you specify an organization-level role for it to assume; you can configure roles in Organization Settings > Access Control > Organization Roles.

identities organization create

Input some details for your new identity:

  • Name (required): A friendly name for the identity.
  • Role (required): A role from the Organization Roles tab for the identity to assume. The organization role assigned will determine what organization-level resources this identity can have access to.

Once you've created an identity, you'll be redirected to a page where you can manage the identity.

identities page

Since the identity has been configured with Universal Auth by default, you should reconfigure it to use Alibaba Cloud Auth instead. To do this, click the cog next to Universal Auth and then select Delete in the options dropdown.

identities press cog

identities page remove default auth

Now create a new Alibaba Cloud Auth Method.

identities create alicloud auth method

Here's some information about each field:

  • Allowed ARNs: A comma-separated list of trusted Alibaba Cloud ARNs that are allowed to authenticate with Hanzo KMS.
  • Access Token TTL (default is 2592000 equivalent to 30 days): The lifetime for an access token in seconds. This value will be referenced at renewal time.
  • Access Token Max TTL (default is 2592000 equivalent to 30 days): The maximum lifetime for an access token in seconds. This value will be referenced at renewal time.
  • Access Token Max Number of Uses (default is 0): The maximum number of times that an access token can be used; a value of 0 implies an infinite number of uses.
  • Access Token Trusted IPs: The IPs or CIDR ranges that access tokens can be used from. By default, each token is given the 0.0.0.0/0, allowing usage from any network address.

Adding an identity to a project

In order to allow an identity to access project-level resources such as secrets, you must add it to the relevant projects.

To do this, head over to the project you want to add the identity to and navigate to Project Settings > Access Control > Machine Identities and press Add Identity.

identities project

Select the identity you want to add to the project and the project-level role you want it to assume. The project role given to the identity will determine what project-level resources this identity can access.

identities project create

Accessing the Hanzo KMS API with the identity

To access the Hanzo KMS API as the identity, you need to construct a signed GetCallerIdentity request and then make a request to the /api/v1/auth/alicloud-auth/login endpoint passing the signed data and signature.

Below is an example of how you can authenticate with Hanzo KMS using NodeJS.


// We highly recommend using environment variables instead of hardcoding these values
const ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID = "...";
const ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET = "...";

const params: { [key: string]: string } = {
  Action: "GetCallerIdentity",
  Format: "JSON",
  Version: "2015-04-01",
  AccessKeyId: ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID,
  SignatureMethod: "HMAC-SHA1",
  Timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
  SignatureVersion: "1.0",
  SignatureNonce: crypto.randomBytes(16).toString("hex"),
};

const canonicalizedQueryString = Object.keys(params)
  .sort()
  .map((key) => `${encodeURIComponent(key)}=${encodeURIComponent(params[key])}`)
  .join("&");

const stringToSign = `GET&%2F&${encodeURIComponent(canonicalizedQueryString)}`;

const signature = crypto
  .createHmac("sha1", `${ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET}&`)
  .update(stringToSign)
  .digest("base64");

const res = await fetch(
  "https://app.kms.hanzo.ai/api/v1/auth/alicloud-auth/login",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      identityId: "...", // Replace with your identity ID
      Signature: signature,
      ...params,
    }),
  },
);

const json = await res.json();

console.log("Hanzo KMS Response:", JSON.stringify(json));

Each identity access token has a time-to-live (TTL) which you can infer from the response of the login operation; the default TTL is 7200 seconds, which can be adjusted.

If an identity access token expires, it can no longer access the Hanzo KMS API. A new access token should be obtained by performing another login operation.

How is this guide?

Last updated on

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On this page

Diagram
Concept
Prerequisite
Guide
Creating an identity
Adding an identity to a project
Accessing the Hanzo KMS API with the identity