One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions 6.7.2 - Administration Guide

IPv6 in One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS)

One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) supports IPv6 for monitoring connections only. You can define both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for its logical network interfaces, and configure connections between IPv4 and IPv6 networks (for example, from a client with an IPv4 address to a target with an IPv6 address). You can also use IPv6 addresses with inband destination selection.

When configuring IPv6 addresses, SPS shortens the address to its canonical form (omitting leading zeroes, and replacing consecutive sections of zeroes with a double colon). Take the following address as an example:

2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329

SPS shortens the address to its canonical form:

[2001:db8::ff00:42:8329]

Additionally, where the IP address and the port is displayed together, IPv6 addresses are shown between brackets. For example, the same address with a port number of 443 is displayed as:

[2001:db8::ff00:42:8329]:443

You can search for both the initial (full) and the canonical form on the SPS Search page. For searches performed using the RPC API, you have to use the canonical form.

To provide the network range for IPv6 addresses, use network prefixes. Pay attention to the differences between IPv4 and IPv6 network ranges: for IPv4, you can limit the address range to a single address with a prefix of /32, but to achieve the same on an IPv6 network, you have to use set the prefix to /128.

SSH host keys

SSH communication authenticates the remote SSH server using public-key cryptography, either using plain host keys, or X.509 certificates.

Client authentication can also use public-key cryptography. The identity of the remote server can be verified by inspecting its host key or certificate. When trying to connect to a server through One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS), the client sees a host key (or certificate) shown by SPS. This key is either the host key of SPS, or the original host key of the server, provided that the private key of the server has been uploaded to SPS. In the latter case, the client will not notice any difference and have no knowledge that it is not communicating directly with the server, but with SPS.

Supported SSH host keys

SPS allows you to use the following SSH host keys:

• RSA (ssh-rsa), which is the most widely used public-key algorithm for the SSH key. In SPS, uploading RSA SSH host keys are supported in PKCS #1 PEM, PKCS #8 PEM, OpenSSH (openssh-key-v1), and PuTTY private key formats.

  NOTE:

  One Identity recommends using 2048-bit RSA keys (or stronger).

• Ed25519 (ssh-ed25519), which offers a better security and faster performance compared to RSA.

  In SPS, uploading Ed25519 SSH host keys are supported in PKCS #8 PEM, OpenSSH (openssh-key-v1), and PuTTY private key formats.

• ECDSA NIST P-256 (ecdsa-sha2-nistp256), which is a variant of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). In SPS, uploading ECDSA SSH host keys are supported in SEC1 PEM, PKCS #8 PEM, OpenSSH (openssh-key-v1), and PuTTY private key formats.

You can have multiple SSH server host keys on SPS for the same server, however, you cannot set more than one key for each type. For example, you can keep your old RSA SSH key and generate a new Ed25519 key but you cannot set two RSA keys.

Authenticating clients using public-key authentication in SSH

Public-key authentication requires a private and a public key (or an X.509 certificate) to be available on One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS). First, the public key of the user is needed to verify the user's identity in the client-side SSH connection: the key presented by the client is compared to the one stored on SPS. SPS uses a private key to authenticate itself to the sever in the server-side connection. SPS can use the private key of the user if it is uploaded to SPS. Alternatively, SPS can generate a new keypair, and use its private key for the server-side authentication, or use agent-forwarding, and authenticate the client with its own key.

The gateway authentication process

When gateway authentication is required for a connection, the user must authenticate on One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) as well.

This additional authentication can be performed:

• Out-of-band: in a protocol-independent way, on the web interface of SPS.

  That way the connections can be authenticated to the central authentication database (for example, LDAP or RADIUS), even if the protocol itself does not support authentication databases. Also, connections using general usernames (for example, root, Administrator, and so on) can be connected to real user accounts.

• Inband: when the protocol allows it, using the incoming connection itself for communication with the authentication database.

  It is the SSH, RDP, and Telnet protocols that allow gateway authentication to be performed also inband, without having to access the SPS web interface.

  For SSH and Telnet connections, inband gateway authentication must be performed when client-side authentication is configured. For details on configuring client-side authentication, see Client-side authentication settings.

  For RDP connections, inband gateway authentication must be performed when SPS is acting as a Remote Desktop Gateway (or RD Gateway). In this case, the client authenticates to the Domain Controller or a local user database. For details, see Using One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) as a Remote Desktop Gateway.

  In the case of RDP connections, inband gateway authentication can also be performed if an AA plugin is configured.

Figure 15: Gateway authentication

Technically, the process of gateway authentication is the following:

1. The user initiates a connection from a client.

2. If gateway authentication is required for the connection, SPS pauses the connection.

3. Out-of-band authentication:

   The user logs in to the SPS web interface, selects the connection from the list of paused connections, and enables it. It is possible to require that the authenticated session and the web session originate from the same client IP address.

   Inband authentication:

   SPS requests the username and optionally the credentials for gateway authentication. The user logs in to the SPS gateway.

4. The user performs the authentication on the server.

   NOTE:

   Gateway authentication can be used together with other advanced authentication and authorization techniques like four-eyes authorization, client- and server-side authentication, and so on.