Security | Tarantool
Administration Security

Security

Tarantool allows for two types of connections:

  • With console.listen() function from console module, you can set up a port which can be used to open an administrative console to the server. This is for administrators to connect to a running instance and make requests. tt invokes console.listen() to create a control socket for each started instance.
  • With box.cfg{listen=…} parameter from box module, you can set up a binary port for connections which read and write to the database or invoke stored procedures.

When you connect to an admin console:

  • The client-server protocol is plain text.
  • No password is necessary.
  • The user is automatically ‘admin’.
  • Each command is fed directly to the built-in Lua interpreter.

Therefore you must set up ports for the admin console very cautiously. If it is a TCP port, it should only be opened for a specific IP. Ideally, it should not be a TCP port at all, it should be a Unix domain socket, so that access to the server machine is required. Thus a typical port setup for admin console is:

console.listen('/var/lib/tarantool/socket_name.sock')

and a typical connection URI is:

/var/lib/tarantool/socket_name.sock

if the listener has the privilege to write on /var/lib/tarantool and the connector has the privilege to read on /var/lib/tarantool. Alternatively, to connect to an admin console of an instance started with tt, use tt connect.

To find out whether a TCP port is a port for admin console, use telnet. For example:

$ telnet 0 3303
Trying 0.0.0.0...
Connected to 0.
Escape character is '^]'.
Tarantool 2.1.0 (Lua console)
type 'help' for interactive help

In this example, the response does not include the word “binary” and does include the words “Lua console”. Therefore it is clear that this is a successful connection to a port for admin console, and you can now enter admin requests on this terminal.

When you connect to a binary port:

  • The client-server protocol is binary.
  • The user is automatically ‘guest’.
  • To change the user, it’s necessary to authenticate.

For ease of use, tt connect command automatically detects the type of connection during handshake and uses EVAL binary protocol command when it’s necessary to execute Lua commands over a binary connection. To execute EVAL, the authenticated user must have global “EXECUTE” privilege.

Therefore, when ssh access to the machine is not available, creating a Tarantool user with global “EXECUTE” privilege and non-empty password can be used to provide a system administrator remote access to an instance.

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