Commit 1e911e05 authored by Achilleas Pipinellis's avatar Achilleas Pipinellis Committed by Kamil Trzcinski

Refactor new CI build permissions model docs

parent 77271388
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......@@ -147,49 +147,6 @@ GitLab 8.12 has completely redesigned build permission system.
You can find all discussion and all our concerns when choosing the current approach:
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18994
We decided that builds permission should be tightly integrated with a permission
of a user who is triggering a build.
The reason to do it like that:
- We already have permission system in place: group and project membership of users,
- We already fully know who is triggering a build (using git push, using web, executing triggers),
- We already know what user is allowed to do,
- We use the user permission for builds that are triggered by him,
- This opens us a lot of possibilities to further enforce user permissions, like:
allowing only specific users to access runners, secure variables and environments,
- It is simple and convenient, that your build can access to everything that you have access to,
- We choose to short living unique tokens, granting access for time of the build,
Currently, any build that is triggered by the user, it's also signed with his permissions.
When user do `git push` or changes files through web (**the pusher**),
we will usually create a new Pipeline.
The Pipeline will be signed as created be the pusher.
Any build created in this pipeline will have the permissions of **the pusher**.
This allows us to make it really easy to evaluate access for all dependent projects,
container images that the pusher would have access too.
The permission is granted only for time that build is running.
The access is revoked after the build is finished.
It is important to note that we have a few types of Users:
- Administrators: CI builds created by Administrators would not have access to all GitLab projects,
but only to projects and container images of projects that the user is a member of or that are either public, or internal,
- External users: CI builds created by external users will have access only to projects to which user has at least reporter access,
this rules out accessing all internal projects by default,
This allows us to make the CI and permission system more trustable.
Let's consider the following scenario:
1. You are an employee of the company. Your company have number of internal tool repositories.
You have multiple CI builds that make use of this repositories.
2. You invite a new user, a visitor, the external user. CI builds created by that user do not have access to internal repositories,
because user also doesn't have the access from within GitLab. You as an employee have to grant explicit access for this user.
This allows us to prevent from accidental data leakage.
### Build privileges
This table shows granted privileges for builds triggered by specific types of users:
......@@ -212,71 +169,3 @@ This table shows granted privileges for builds triggered by specific types of us
[^3]: Only if user is not external one.
[^4]: Only if user is a member of the project.
### Build token
The above gives a question about trustability of build token.
Unique build token is generated for each project.
This build token allows to access all projects that would be normally accessible
to the user creating that build.
We try to make sure that this token doesn't leak.
We do that by:
1. Securing all API endpoints to not expose the build token,
1. Masking the build token from build logs,
1. Allowing to use the build token only when build is running,
However, this brings a question about runners security.
To make sure that this token doesn't leak you also make sure that you configure
your runners in most secure possible way, by avoiding using this configurations:
1. Any usage of `privileged` mode if the machines are re-used is risky,
1. Using `shell` executor,
By using in-secure GitLab Runner configuration you allow the rogue developers
to steal the tokens of other builds.
### Debugging problems
It can happen that some of the users will complain that CI builds do fail for them.
It is most likely that your project access other projects sources,
and the user doesn't have the permissions.
In the build log look for information about 403 or forbidden access.
You then as Administrator can verify that the user is a member of the group or project,
and you when impersonated as the user can retry a failing build
on behalf of the user to verify that everything is correct.
### Before 8.12
In versions before 8.12 all CI builds would use runners token to checkout project sources.
The project runners token was a token that you would find in
[CI/CD Pipelines](https://gitlab.com/my-group/my-project/pipelines/settings).
The project runners token was used for registering new specific runners assigned to project
and to checkout project sources.
The project runners token could also be used to use GitLab Container Registry for that project,
allowing to pull and push Docker images from within CI build.
This token was limited to access only that project.
GitLab would create an special checkout URL:
```
https://gitlab-ci-token:<project-runners-token>/gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git
```
User could also use in his CI builds all docker related commands
to interact with GitLab Container Registry:
```
docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN registry.gitlab.com
```
Using single token had multiple security implications:
- Token would be readable to anyone who has developer access to project who could run CI builds,
allowing to register any specific runner for a project,
- Token would allow to access only project sources,
forbidding to accessing any other projects,
- Token was not expiring, and multi-purpose: used for checking out sources,
for registering specific runners and for accessing project's container registry with read-write permissions
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