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| <div class="chapter"> |
| <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"> |
| <a name="remoting"></a>Remoting / Forwarding</h1></div></div></div> |
| <p>Smartcards or hardware security modules (HSM) are technologies to |
| keep private keys on devices physically isolated to a device only available |
| to the user. That way only the intended user can use that device to authenticate, |
| authorize or perform other functions that involve the private keys. These come |
| usually in the form of a USB device or token which is plugged into the local computer. |
| </p> |
| <p>In modern "cloud" computing, it is often desirable to virtually transfer such |
| a device on remote servers. For example, one can sign software or documents on a remote |
| server, use the local smart card to authorize itself to Kerberos, or any other |
| possible use. There are various approaches to tackle that problem, and on different |
| levels of the smart card application stack. It is possible to forward the USB |
| device holding the smart card, or forward the lower-level PC/SC protocol which |
| some smart cards talk, or forward the high-level interface used to communicate |
| with smart cards, the PKCS#11 interface.</p> |
| <p>To address that problem, in p11-kit, we allow the forwarding of |
| the higher level smart card interface, PKCS#11. In the following paragraphs |
| we describe the approach and tools needed to perform that forwarding over SSH |
| secure communication channels.</p> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-scenario"></a><h2>Scenario</h2> |
| <p>We assume having a local workstation, and a remote server. On the local |
| computer we have inserted a smart card, in our examples we use a Nitrokey |
| card with the OpenSC drivers. We will forward the card |
| from the workstation to the remote server.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-setup"></a><h2>Setting up the PKCS#11 forwarding server on a local client</h2> |
| <p>To forward a smartcard to a remote server, we first need to identify which |
| smartcards are available. To list the smartcards currently attached to the local |
| computer, use the p11tool command from the gnutls package. For example: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ p11tool --list-tokens |
| ... |
| Token 6: |
| URL: pkcs11:model=PKCS%2315%20emulated;manufacturer=www.CardContact.de;serial=DENK0000000;token=UserPIN%20%28Daiki%27s%20token%29 |
| Label: UserPIN (Daiki's token) |
| Type: Hardware token |
| Manufacturer: www.CardContact.de |
| Model: PKCS#15 emulated |
| Serial: DENK0000000 |
| Module: opensc-pkcs11.so |
| ... |
| </pre> |
| <p>This is the entry for the card we'd like to forward to remote system. The important |
| pieces are the 'pkcs11:' URL listed above, and the module name. Once we determine which |
| smartcard to forward, we expose it to a local Unix domain socket, with the following |
| p11-kit server command. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ p11-kit server --provider /usr/lib64/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.so "pkcs11:model=PKCS%2315%20emulated;manufacturer=www.CardContact.de;serial=DENK0000000;token=UserPIN%20%28Daiki%27s%20token%29" |
| </pre> |
| <p>Here we provide to the server the module location (optional) with the --provider |
| option, as well as the URL of the card. We copied the values from the Module and URL |
| lines of the p11tool output above. When the p11-kit server command starts, it will |
| print the address of the PKCS#11 unix domain socket and the process ID of the server. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| P11_KIT_SERVER_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/12345/p11-kit/pkcs11-12345 |
| P11_KIT_SERVER_PID=12345 |
| </pre> |
| <p>For later use, set the variables output by the tool on your shell prompt |
| (e.g., copy and paste them or call the above p11-kit server command line with |
| <code class="literal">eval $(p11-kit server ...)</code>). |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-forwarding-socket"></a><h2>Forwarding and using the PKCS#11 Unix socket on the remote server</h2> |
| <p>On the remote server, we will initially forward the previously generated PKCS#11 |
| unix socket, and then access the smart card through it. To access the forwarded socket |
| as if it were a smart card, a dedicated PKCS#11 module p11-kit-client.so is provided as |
| part of the p11-kit-server package. |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-forwarding-socket-prep"></a><h2>Preparing the remote system for PKCS#11 socket forwarding</h2> |
| <p>One important detail you should be aware of, is the file system location of the |
| forwarded socket. By convention, the p11-kit-client.so module utilizes the "user runtime |
| directory", managed by systemd; the directory is created when a user logs in, and removed |
| upon logout, so that the user doesn't need to manually clean up the socket file. |
| </p> |
| <p>To locate your user runtime directory, do: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ systemd-path user-runtime |
| /run/user/1000 |
| </pre> |
| <p>The <code class="literal">p11-kit-client.so</code> module looks for the socket file under a |
| subdirectory (<code class="literal">/run/user/1000/p11-kit</code> in this example). To enable |
| auto-creation of the directory, do the following. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ systemctl --user enable p11-kit-client.service |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-finally-forwarding"></a><h2>Forwarding the PKCS#11 socket</h2> |
| <p>We will use ssh to forward the local PKCS#11 unix socket to the remote server. |
| Following the p11-kit-client convention, we will forward the socket to the remote user |
| run-time path so that cleaning up on disconnect is not required. The remote location |
| of the run-time path can be obtained as follows. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ ssh [user]@[remotehost] systemd-path user-runtime |
| /run/user/1000 |
| </pre> |
| <p>The number at the end of the path above is your user ID in that system |
| (and thus will vary from user to user). You can now forward the Unix domain socket |
| with the -R option of the ssh command, after replacing the example path with the |
| actual run-time path. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ ssh -R /run/user/[userID]/p11-kit/pkcs11:${P11_KIT_SERVER_ADDRESS#*=} [user]@[remotehost] |
| </pre> |
| <p>After successfully logging in to the remote host, you can use the forwarded |
| smartcard as if it were directly connected to the server using the |
| <code class="literal">p11-kit-client.so</code>. Note that if any error occurs during the forwarding |
| setup, you will see something like this on your terminal: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| Warning: remote port forwarding failed for listen path /run/user/... |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-using"></a><h2>Using the forwarded PKCS#11 socket</h2> |
| <p>Let's first make sure the smart card works on the remote system, by listing it: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ ls -l /run/user/1000/p11-kit/pkcs11 |
|
|
| $ p11tool --provider /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-client.so --list-tokens |
| ... |
| Token 0: |
| URL: pkcs11:model=PKCS%2315%20emulated;manufacturer=www.CardContact.de;serial=DENK0000000;token=UserPIN%20%28Daiki%27s%20token%29 |
| Label: UserPIN (Daiki's token) |
| Type: Hardware token |
| Manufacturer: www.CardContact.de |
| Model: PKCS#15 emulated |
| Serial: DENK0000000 |
| Module: (null) |
| ... |
| </pre> |
| <p>We can similarly generate, copy objects or test certificates to the card using |
| the same command. Any applications which support PKCS#11 can perform cryptographic |
| operations through the client module. |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-registering"></a><h2>Registering the client module for use with OpenSSL and GnuTLS apps</h2> |
| <p>To utilize the p11-kit-client module with OpenSSL (via engine_pkcs11 provided |
| by the libp11 package) and GnuTLS applications, you have to register it in |
| p11-kit. To do it for the current user, use the following commands: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ mkdir .config/pkcs11/modules/ |
| $ echo "module: /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-client.so" >.config/pkcs11/modules/p11-kit-client.module |
| </pre> |
| <p>Once this is done both OpenSSL and GnuTLS applications should work, for example: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ URL="pkcs11:model=PKCS%2315%20emulated;manufacturer=www.CardContact.de;serial=DENK0000000;token=UserPIN%20%28Daiki%27s%20token%29" |
|
|
| # Generate a key using gnutls’ p11tool |
| $ p11tool --generate-ecc --login --label test-key "$URL" |
|
|
| # generate a certificate request with the previous key using openssl |
| $ openssl req -engine pkcs11 -new -key "$URL;;object=test-key;type=private;pin-value=XXXX" \ |
| -keyform engine -out req.pem -text -subj "/CN=Test user" |
| </pre> |
| <p>Note that the token URL remains the same in the forwarded system as in the original one. |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-ssh"></a><h2>Using the client module with OpenSSH</h2> |
| <p>To re-use the already forwarded smartcard for authentication with another remote host, you can run ssh and provide the -I option with p11-kit-client.so. For example: |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ ssh -I /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-client.so [user]@[anotherhost] |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
| <div class="refsect1"> |
| <a name="remoting-nss"></a><h2>Using the client module with NSS applications</h2> |
| <p>To register the forwarded smartcard in NSS applications, you can set it up with |
| the modutil command, as follows. |
| </p> |
| <pre class="programlisting"> |
| $ sudo modutil -dbdir /etc/pki/nssdb -add p11-kit-client -libfile /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-client.so |
|
|
| $ modutil -dbdir /etc/pki/nssdb -list |
| ... |
| 3. p11-kit-client |
| library name: /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-client.so |
| uri: pkcs11:library-manufacturer=OpenSC%20Project;library-description=OpenSC%20smartcard%20framework;library-version=0.17 |
| slots: 1 slot attached |
| status: loaded |
|
|
| slot: Nitrokey Nitrokey HSM (010000000000000000000000) 00 00 |
| token: UserPIN (Daiki's token) |
| uri: pkcs11:token=UserPIN%20(Daiki's%20token);manufacturer=www.CardContact.de;serial=DENK0000000;model=PKCS%2315%20emulated |
| </pre> |
| </div> |
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