You can protect SSM from unauthorized access using the following security features:

• SSL encryption secures traffic between SSM Client and SSM Server
• HTTP password protection adds authentication when accessing the SSM Server web interface
• Keep SSM Server isolated from the internet, where possible.

In this chapter

[TOC]

You can encrypt traffic between SSM Client and SSM Server using SSL certificates.

To use a valid SSL certificate, mount the directory with the certificate files to /srv/nginx/ when running the SSM Server container.

$ docker run -d -p 443:443 \
  --volumes-from ssm-data \
  --name ssm-server \
  -v /etc/ssm-certs:/srv/nginx \
  --restart always \
  shatteredsilicon/ssm-server:latest

The directory (/etc/ssm-certs in this example) that you intend to mount must contain the following files:

• certificate.crt
• certificate.key
• ca-certs.pem
• dhparam.pem

!!! alert alert-info "Note" To enable SSL encryption, The container publishes port 443 instead of 80.

Alternatively, you can use docker cp to copy the files to an already existing ssm-server container.

$ docker cp certificate.crt ssm-server:/srv/nginx/certificate.crt
$ docker cp certificate.key ssm-server:/srv/nginx/certificate.key
$ docker cp ca-certs.pem ssm-server:/srv/nginx/ca-certs.pem
$ docker cp dhparam.pem ssm-server:/srv/nginx/dhparam.pem

This example assumes that you have changed to the directory that contains the certificate files.

The SSM Server images (Docker, OVF, and AMI) already include self-signed certificates. To be able to use them in your Docker container, make sure to publish the container’s port 443 to the host’s port 443 when running the docker run command.

$ docker run -d \
   -p 443:443 \
   --volumes-from ssm-data \
   --name ssm-server \
   --restart always \
   shatteredsilicon/ssm-server:latest

Then, you need to enable SSL when connecting a SSM Client to a SSM Server. If you purchased the certificate from a certificate authority (CA):

$ ssm-admin config --server 192.168.100.1 --server-ssl

If you generated a self-signed certificate:

$ ssm-admin config --server 192.168.100.1 --server-insecure-ssl

You can set the password for accessing the SSM Server web interface by passing the SERVER_PASSWORD environment variable when creating and running the SSM Server container.

To set the environment variable, use the -e option.

By default, the user name is ssm. You can change it by passing the SERVER_USER environment variable. Note that the following example uses an insecure port 80 which is typically used for HTTP connections.

Run the following commands as root or by using the sudo command.

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 \
  --volumes-from ssm-data \
  --name ssm-server \
  -e SERVER_USER=jsmith \
  -e SERVER_PASSWORD=SomeR4ndom-Pa$$w0rd \
  --restart always \
  shatteredsilicon/ssm-server:latest

SSM Client uses the same credentials to communicate with SSM Server. If you set the user name and password as described, specify them when connecting a SSM Client to a SSM Server:

$ ssm-admin config --server 192.168.100.1 --server-user jsmith --server-password pass1234

You can enable both HTTP password protection and SSL encryption by combining the corresponding options.

The following example shows how you might run the SSM Server container:

$ docker run -d -p 443:443 \
  --volumes-from ssm-data \
  --name ssm-server \
  -e SERVER_USER=jsmith \
  -e SERVER_PASSWORD=SomeR4ndom-Pa$$w0rd \
  -v /etc/ssm-certs:/srv/nginx \
  --restart always \
  shatteredsilicon/ssm-server:latest

The following example shows how you might connect to SSM Server:

$ ssm-admin config --server 192.168.100.1 --server-user jsmith --server-password pass1234 --server-insecure-ssl

To see which security features are enabled, run either ssm-admin ping, ssm-admin config, ssm-admin info, or ssm-admin list and look at the server address field. For example:

$ ssm-admin ping
OK, SSM server is alive.

SSM Server      | 192.168.100.1 (insecure SSL, password-protected)
Client Name     | centos7.vm
Client Address  | 192.168.200.1

The following assumes you are using a Docker container for SSM Server.

1. Edit /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
2. Enable cookie_secure and set the value to true
3. Restart Grafana: supervisorctl restart grafana