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Setting Up Field and Document Level Security
editSetting Up Field and Document Level Security
editYou can control access to data within an index by adding field and document level security permissions to a role. Field level security permissions restrict access to particular fields within a document. Document level security permissions restrict access to particular documents within an index.
Document and field level security is currently meant to operate with read-only privileged accounts. Users with document and field level security enabled for an index should not perform write operations.
A role can define both field and document level permissions on a per-index basis. A role that doesn’t specify field level permissions grants access to ALL fields. Similarly, a role that doesn’t specify document level permissions grants access to ALL documents in the index.
When assigning users multiple roles, be careful that you don’t inadvertently grant wider access than intended. Each user has a single set of field level and document level permissions per index. When you assign a user multiple roles, the permissions are ORed together. This means if you assign one role that restricts access to particular fields in an index, and another that doesn’t specify any field level access restrictions for that index, the user will have access to all fields. The same is true for document level permissions.
For example, let’s say role_a
only grants access to the address
field of the documents in index1
, but doesn’t specify any document
restrictions. Conversely, role_b
limits access to a subset of the documents
in index1
, but doesn’t specify any field restrictions. If you assign a user
both roles, role_a
gives the user access to all documents and role_b
gives
the user access to all fields.
If you need to restrict access to both documents and fields, consider splitting documents by index instead.
Field Level Security
editTo enable field level security, you specify the fields that each role can access as part of the indices permissions in a role definition. This binds field level security to a well defined set of indices (and potentially a set of documents).
The following role definition grants read access only to the category
,
@timestamp
, and message
fields in all the events-*
indices.
{ "indices": [ { "names": [ "events-*" ], "privileges": [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant" : [ "category", "@timestamp", "message" ] } } ] }
To allow access to the _all
meta field, you must explicitly list it as an
allowed field. Access to the following meta fields is always allowed: _id
,
_type
, _parent
, _routing
, _timestamp
, _ttl
, _size
and _index
. If
you specify an empty list of fields, only these meta fields are accessible.
Omitting the fields entry entirely disables field-level security.
You can also specify field expressions. For example, the following
example grants read access to all fields starting with event_
prefix:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant" : [ "event_*" ] } } ] }
Use the dot notations to refer to nested fields in more complex documents. For example, assuming the following document:
{ "customer": { "handle": "Jim", "email": "jim@mycompany.com", "phone": "555-555-5555" } }
The following role definition only allows access to the customer handle
field:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant" : [ "customer.handle" ] } } ] }
This is where wildcard support shines. For example, use customer.*
to only
enable read access to the customer
data:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant" : [ "customer.*" ] } } ] }
Similar to granting field permissions the permission to access fields can be denied with the following syntax:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant" : [ "*"], "except": [ "customer.handle" ] } } ] }
The following rules apply:
Absence of "field_security" in a role is equivalent to * access. Denied fields may only be provided if permission has been granted explicitly to other fields. The exceptions given must be a subset of the fields that permissions have been granted to. Denied and granted fields defined implies access to all granted fields except those which match the pattern in denied fields. Example:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "except": [ "customer.handle" ], "grant" : [ "customer.*" ] } } ] }
In the above example all fields with the prefix "customer." are allowed except for "customer.handle".
An empty array for grant (eg. "grant" : []) means that no fields are granted access to.
Field Level Security and Roles
editWhen a user has several roles that specify field level permissions then the resulting field level permissions per index are the union of the individual role permissions. For example if these two roles are merged:
{ // role 1 ... "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant": [ "a.*" ], "except" : [ "a.b*" ] } } ] } { // role 2 ... "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant": [ "a.b*" ], "except" : [ "a.b.c*" ] } } ] }
Then the resulting permission would be equal to:
{ // role 1 + role 2 ... "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "field_security" : { "grant": [ "a.*" ], "except" : [ "a.b.c*" ] } } ] }
Document Level Security
editDocument level security restricts the documents that users have read access to. To enable document level security, you specify a query that matches all the accessible documents as part of the indices permissions within a role definition. This binds document level security to a well defined set of indices.
Enabling document level security restricts which documents can be accessed from any document based read API.
To enable document level security, you use a query to specify the documents that each role can access in the roles.yml
file.
You specify the document query with the query
option. The document query is associated with a particular index or index pattern and
operates in conjunction with the privileges specified for the indices.
The following role definition grants read access only to documents that
belong to the click
category within all the events-*
indices.
{ "indices": [ { "names": [ "events-*" ], "privileges": [ "read" ], "query": "{\"match\": {\"category\": \"click\"}}" } ] }
Omitting the query
entry entirely disables document level security for
the respective indices permission entry.
The specified query
expects the same format as if it was defined in the
search request and supports ELasticsearch’s full Query DSL.
For example, the following role grants read access to all indices, but restricts
access to documents whose department_id
equals 12
.
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "*" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "query" : { "term" : { "department_id" : 12 } } } ] }
query
also accepts queries written as string values
Templating a Role Query
editYou can use Mustache templates in a role query to insert the username of the
current authenticated user into the role. Like other places in Elasticsearch
that support templating or scripting, you can specify inline, stored,
or file based templates and define custom parameters. You access the current
authenticated user’s details through the _user
parameter.
For example, the following role query uses a template to insert the username of the current authenticated user:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "my_index" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "query" : { "template" : { "inline" : { "term" : { "acl.username" : "{{_user.username}}" } } } } } ] }
You can access the following information through the _user
variable:
Property | Description |
---|---|
|
The username of the current authenticated user. |
|
If specified, the full name of the current authenticated user. |
|
If specified, the email of the current authenticated user. |
|
If associated, a list of the role names of the current authenticated user. |
|
If specified, a hash holding custom metadata of the current authenticated user. |
You can also access custom user metadata. For example, if you maintain a
group_id
in your user metadata, you can apply document level security
based on the group.id
field in your documents:
{ "indices" : [ { "names" : [ "my_index" ], "privileges" : [ "read" ], "query" : { "template" : { "inline" : { "term" : { "group.id" : "{{_user.metadata.group_id}}" } } } } } ] }
Set Security User Ingest Processor
editIf an index is being shared by many small users it makes sense put all these users into the same index as having a
dedicated index or shard per user is too wasteful. In order to guarantee that a user only read its own documents it
makes sense to set up document level security. In order to use document level security for this each document must have
the username or role name associated with it, so that it can be queried by the document level security’s role query.
This is where the set_security_user
ingest processor can help.
You need to make sure to use unique ids for each user that uses the same index, because document level security doesn’t apply on write APIs and you can overwrite other users' documents. This ingest processor just adds properties of the current authenticated user to the documents being indexed.
The set_security_user
processor attaches user related details (username
, roles
, email
, full_name
and metadata
)
from the current authenticated user to the current document by pre-processed by ingest.
So when indexing data with an ingest pipeline then user details get automatically attached with the document:
PUT shared-logs/log/1?pipeline=my_pipeline_id { ... }
Read the ingest docs for more information about setting up a pipeline and other processors.
Table 11. Set Security User Options
Name | Required | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
|
yes |
- |
The field to store the user information into. |
|
no |
[ |
Controls what user related properties are added to the |
Example config that adds all user details of the current authenticated user to the user
field to all documents being
processed by this pipeline:
{ "processors" : [ { "set_security_user": { "field": "user" } } ] }
Multiple Roles with Document and Field Level Security
editA user can have many roles and each role can define different permissions on the same index. It is important to understand the behavior of Document and Field Level security in this scenario.
Document level security will take into account each role held by the user, and combine each document level security query for a given index with an "OR". This means that only one of the role queries must match for a document to be returned. For example, if a role grants access to an index without document level security and another grants access with document level security, document level security will not be applied; the user with both roles will have access to all of the documents in the index.
Field level security will take into account each role the user has and combine all of the fields listed into a single set for each index. For example, if a role grants access to an index without field level security and another grants access with field level security, field level security will not be applied for that index; the user with both roles will have access to all of the fields in in the index.