argocd-ephemeral-access

Overview

This project provides an Argo CD extension to enable ephemeral access in Argo CD UI. It can be viewed as something similar to the functionality that sudo command provides as users can execute actions that require higher permissions. The exact access the user is allowed to be elevated to and for how long the access should be granted are configurable. The elevated access are automatically managed by creating and updating Argo CD AppProject roles.

Note: This project requires that the Argo CD Applications are associated with an AppProjects different than default.

Demo

Prereqs

The Ephemeral Access extension requires Argo CD v2.13.0+ to be installed.

Installation

The ephemeral-access functionality is provided by the following components that needs to be configured properly to achieve the desired behaviour:

• ui: Argo CD UI extension that provides users with the functionality to request elevated access to an Argo CD Application.
• backend: Serves the REST API used by the UI extension.
• controller: Responsible for reconciling the AccessRequest resource.

Installing the Backend and the Controller

We provide a consolidated install.yaml asset file in every release. The install.yaml file contains all the resources required to run the backend service and the controller. Check the latest release in the releases page and replace the DESIRED_VERSION in the command below:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-ephemeral-access/releases/download/<DESIRED_VERSION>/install.yaml

This command will create a new namespace argocd-ephemeral-access and deploy the necessary resources in it.

All configurations available for the backend and controller are provided as part of the dedicated configmap for each of those components. To modify the configuration, the suggested method is to create a kustomize overlay and patch the configmaps. Refer to the following files for a quick reference about the available fields as well as the documentation:

• Backend configuration
• Controller configuration

Install UI extension

The UI extension needs to be installed by mounting the React component in Argo CD API server. This process can be automated by using the argocd-extension-installer. This installation method will run an init container that will download, extract and place the file in the correct location.

The yaml file below is an example of how to define a kustomize patch to install this UI extension:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: argocd-server
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      initContainers:
        - name: extension-ephemeral-access
          image: quay.io/argoprojlabs/argocd-extension-installer:v0.0.8@sha256:e7cb054207620566286fce2d809b4f298a72474e0d8779ffa8ec92c3b630f054
          env:
          - name: EXTENSION_NAME
            value: ephemeral-access
          - name: EXTENSION_URL
            value: https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-ephemeral-access/releases/download/v0.1.0/extension.tar.gz
          - name: EXTENSION_CHECKSUM_URL
            value: https://github.com/argoproj-labs/argocd-ephemeral-access/releases/download/v0.1.0/extension_checksums.txt
          - name: EXTENSION_JS_VARS
            value: |
              {
                "EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_LABEL_KEY": "some-label/is-production",
                "EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_LABEL_VALUE": "true",
                "EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_MAIN_BANNER": "All production changes require an associated change request. Click the REQUEST ACCESS button above to automatically create a change request associated with your user",
                "EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_MAIN_BANNER_ADDITIONAL_INFO_LINK": "https://link-to-some-documentation.com",
                "EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_DEFAULT_ROLE": "devops"
              }
          volumeMounts:
            - name: extensions
              mountPath: /tmp/extensions/
          securityContext:
            runAsUser: 1000
            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
      containers:
        - name: argocd-server
          volumeMounts:
            - name: extensions
              mountPath: /tmp/extensions/
      volumes:
        - name: extensions
          emptyDir: {}

Note

The EXTENSION_JS_VARS is an special variable. It contains the UI extension configurations. If provided, the argocd-extension-installer will automatically create the js file to expose the provided values to the UI extension. The following table describes the js variables accepted by the EphemeralAccess UI extension:

Name	Description	Required	Default
EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_DEFAULT_ROLE	Defines the RoleName to be associated with users once the AccessRequest is created	Yes	-
EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_LABEL_KEY	If provided, it will only enable the UI extension if the Argo CD Application has this label key	No	-
EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_LABEL_VALUE	If provided, it will only enable the UI extension if the Argo CD Application has this label value	No	-
EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_MAIN_BANNER	A text with the brief description to instruct users about how the extension works	No	-
EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_MAIN_BANNER_ADDITIONAL_INFO_LINK	An additional link to provide users with more detailed documentation	No	-

Enabling the EphemeralAccess extension in Argo CD

Argo CD needs to have the proxy extension feature enabled for the EphemeralAccess extension to work. In order to do so add the following entry in the argocd-cmd-params-cm:

server.enable.proxy.extension: "true"

The EphemeralAccess extension needs to be authorized in Argo CD API server. To enable it for all users add the following entry in argocd-rbac-cm:

policy.csv: |-
  p, role:readonly, extensions, invoke, ephemeral, allow

Note: make sure to assign a proper role to the extension policy if you want to restrict the access.

Finally Argo CD needs to be configured so it knows how to reach the EphemeralAccess backend service. In order to do so, add the following section in the argocd-cm.

  extension.config.ephemeral: |-
    services:
    - url: <EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_BACKEND_URL>

Attention: Make sure to change the EPHEMERAL_ACCESS_BACKEND_URL to the URL where backend service is configured. The backend service URL needs to be reacheable by the Argo CD API server.

How it Works

This project provides a set of CRDs that are used to configure the behaviour of how the Argo CD access can be elevated. The diagram below describes how the different components interact which each CRD:

The CRDs provided as part of this project are described below:

AccessBinding

The AccessBinding resource is used by the backend service in order to authorize the incoming access request. The authorization is based on the groups claim that are associated with the user token once authenticated by the OIDC provider. The backend service will try to match each entry of the user's groups claim with the value provided in the .spec.subjects list. At least one entry needs to match for the user to be allowed to have their access elavated to the role defined in the spec.roleTemplateRef.name.

The .spec.subjects list are templated fields and accept the following variables:

• application: the Argo CD Application resource. Note that all Application resource's fields will be available.
• project: the Argo CD AppProject resource. Similar to the application variable, all AppProject resource's fields will be available.

The .spec.if field can be used to provide extra custom logic to decide if a given subject should have their access elevated. The field will be evaluated using the expr syntax and the same variables above will be also available.

The example below demonstrates how the AccessBinding can be configured:

apiVersion: ephemeral-access.argoproj-labs.io/v1alpha1
kind: AccessBinding
metadata:
  name: some-access-binding
spec:
  ordinal: 1
  friendlyName: "Devops (Write)"
  subjects: 
    - group1
    - role-{{.application.metadata.labels.some-label}}
  if: "application.metadata.labels.some-label != nil"
  roleTemplateRef:
    name: devops

AccessRequest

The AccessRequest resource is automatically generated by the backend service based on preconfigured values. This is the main resouce used to drive how and for how long the user should have their access elevated.

The example below demonstrates how the AccessRequest can be configured:

apiVersion: ephemeral-access.argoproj-labs.io/v1alpha1
kind: AccessRequest
metadata:
  name: some-application-username
  namespace: ephemeral
spec:
  application:
    name: ephemeral
    namespace: argocd
  duration: '1m'
  role:
    friendlyName: Devops (Write)
    ordinal: 1
    templateName: devops
  subject:
    username: some_user@fakedomain.com

RoleTemplate

The RoleTemplate defines a templated Argo CD RBAC policies. Once the elevated access is requested and approved, the policies will be rendered and dynamicaly associated with the AppProject related with the access request.

The following variable are available to be used in the templated fields (.spec.description and .spec.policies):

• role: generated string that must be used as the second value in the policy csv as demonstrated in the example below.
• project: the Argo CD AppProject name associated with the access request
• application: the Argo CD Application name associated with the access request
• namespace: the namespace where the Argo CD Application lives.

The example below demonstrates how the RoleTemplate can be configured:

apiVersion: ephemeral-access.argoproj-labs.io/v1alpha1
kind: RoleTemplate
metadata:
  name: devops
spec:
  description: write permission in application {{.application}}
  name: "devops"
  policies:
  - p, {{.role}}, applications, sync, {{.project}}/{{.application}}, allow
  - p, {{.role}}, applications, action/*, {{.project}}/{{.application}}, allow
  - p, {{.role}}, applications, delete/*/Pod/*, {{.project}}/{{.application}}, allow

Contributing

Development

All necessary development tasks are available as make targets. Some of the targets will make use of external tools. All external tools used by this project will be automatically downloaded in the bin folder of this repo as required.

Run the following command to have a full documented list of make targets available as part of this project:

make help

Building

For building all component of this project simply run make (which is an alias for make build). This target will:

• Build the Go project. The binary will be placed in the bin folder of this repo.
• Build the UI extension. The UI extension will be packaged in the ui/extension.tar file in this repo.

To build a docker image with custom namespace and tag run

IMAGE_NAMESPACE="my.company.com/argoproj-labs" IMAGE_TAG="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)" make docker-build