Ensure that authentication is enabled for Cassandra databases

CriticalLevel 1Automatedcassandra

Description

Authentication is pluggable in Cassandra and is configured using the authenticator setting in cassandra.yaml. Cassandra ships with two options included in the default distribution, AllowAllAuthenticator and PasswordAuthenticator. The default, AllowAllAuthenticator, performs no authentication checks and therefore requires no credentials. It is used to disable authentication completely. Checks /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml (package install; SKIP when it does not exist).

How it is checked

Audit method: File pattern

File: /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml
Pattern: (?m)^authenticator:[ \t]*(?:\n(?:[ \t]*(?:#[^\n]*)?\n|[ \t]+[^\n]*\n)*?[ \t]+class_name[ \t]*:[ \t]*)?['\x22]?(?:[\w.]*\.)?(?:PasswordAuthenticator|MutualTlsAuthenticator|MutualTlsWithPasswordFallbackAuthenticator)\b

How it is fixed

Fix method: Guidance or infrastructure patch

Set 'authenticator: PasswordAuthenticator' in cassandra.yaml, raise system_auth replication (NetworkTopologyStrategy, RF 3 per DC), rolling-restart the nodes and create a new superuser.

Properties

Operating systems: Any
Tags: cassandraauthentication
Reference: CIS Apache Cassandra 5.0 Benchmark v1.1.0 - 2.1 Ensure that authentication is enabled for Cassandra databases

Check this host

Run this on a machine you are allowed to audit. The scan is read-only.

shell

tmaegis scan --target cassandra