Ensure that Data Center Authorizations is activated

MediumLevel 1Automatedcassandra

Description

Authorization at Data Center level is pluggable in Cassandra and is configured using the network_authorizer setting in cassandra.yaml. Cassandra ships with AllowAllNetworkAuthorizer which allows any role to access any datacenter effectively disabling datacenter authorization; which is the current behavior. The benchmark rates this recommendation Manual; the automated check covers its objective pass criterion. 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)^network_authorizer:[ \t]*(?:\n(?:[ \t]*(?:#[^\n]*)?\n|[ \t]+[^\n]*\n)*?[ \t]+class_name[ \t]*:[ \t]*)?['\x22]?(?:[\w.]*\.)?(?:CassandraNetworkAuthorizer)\b

How it is fixed

Fix method: Guidance or infrastructure patch

On each node set 'network_authorizer: CassandraNetworkAuthorizer' in cassandra.yaml and rolling-restart; then restrict roles with ALTER ROLE <r> WITH ACCESS TO DATACENTERS {...}.

Properties

Operating systems: Any
Tags: cassandraauthorization
Reference: CIS Apache Cassandra 5.0 Benchmark v1.1.0 - 3.6 Ensure that Data Center Authorizations is activated

Check this host

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

shell

tmaegis scan --target cassandra