Category Archives: Security

OpenVPN: the No route to host and ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE errors – the cause and a solution

14 October 2019
 

 We have an OpenVPN Access Server running, see its setup in the OpenVPN: OpenVPN Access Server set up and AWS VPC peering configuration post. The VPN server is hosted in a first AWS VPC, while a Bitwarden service – in another one VPC. Between those VPCs we have a VPC peering configured, and the OpenVPN… Read More »

Jenkins: SAML Authentication with Okta SSO and users groups

11 October 2019
 

 SAML – Secure Assertion Markup Language is used for federated authentication when some service which we need to get access to (a Service Provider), asks another service (an Identity Provider) to perform a user’s authentification. Check the documentation here>>>. Service Provider (SP): is a system where need to authenticate, in our case this will be Jenkins… Read More »

Okta: the Custom domain and TLS configuration

4 October 2019
 

 You can use your own domain configured for Okta. The one thing worth to mention here is the fact that Okta’s official plugin doesn’t work with a Custom domain feature so you’ll have to use Okta’s URL for the plugin authentification, see the  documentation for details. Custom domain configuration Go to the Settings > Customization:… Read More »

Kubernetes: part 4 – AWS EKS authentification, aws-iam-authenticator and AWS IAM

3 September 2019
 

  Let’s proceed with our AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service, EKS. Previous parts: Kubernetes: part 1 – architecture and main components overview Kubernetes: part 2 – a cluster set up on AWS with AWS cloud-provider and AWS LoadBalancer Kubernetes: part 3 – AWS EKS overview and manual EKS cluster set up. In the previous – Kubernetes:… Read More »

AWS: IAM users keys rotation, EC2 IAM Roles and Jenkins

30 May 2019
 

 Today I checked our IAM-users and “suddenly” recalled that it’s good to update their credentials sometimes: Well, that’s good to do but here is a question: it’s simple enough to set an expire for keys in IAM, but what to do with all scripts which are used in our Jenkins and which are using those… Read More »

OpenVPN: Let’s Encrypt DNS verification on AWS Route53 and OpenVPN Access Server SSL certificate auto update

24 May 2019
 

 In addition to the OpenVPN: SSL and hostname configuration post about OpenVPN Access Server, set up and configuration. So, three months passed and it’s time to renew Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate (see. Prometheus: Alertmanager и blackbox-exporter — проверка срока действия SSL и нотификация в Slack, Rus). I could use a well-know for me scheme with… Read More »

Debian: unattended-upgrades – automatic upgrades installation with email notifications via AWS SES

23 May 2019
 

 A unattended-upgrades package performs automated upgrades installation on Debian/Ubuntu systems. It’s a Python script (1500 lines) located at /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade (and /usr/bin/unattended-upgrades is a symlink to the /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade). CentsOS/RHEL analog – yum-cron. Install it: [simterm] $ sudo apt -y install unattended-upgrades [/simterm] The main config file is /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades where upgrade types, email settings etc can be… Read More »

Bitwarden: an organization’s password manager self-hosted version installation on an AWS EC2

1 May 2019
 

 We consider Bitwarden as a passwords keeper for our project with the main goal to have an ability to have separated access to secrets by user roles and/or ACLs. I.e. Pass or KeePass are good for self-usage by one person but they have no main things – a normal web-interface and role-based access to data.… Read More »