hyperhive/swarm-nats-auth
Repository files (latest commit first)
Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
atlas 61a13a63d4 fix(#3297): grant the JetStream subjects every client needs first
A grant carrying every bucket-specific subject and neither of these
cannot create the bucket at all: the client times out on `$JS.API.INFO`
long before it reaches a subject that was granted, and a NATS denial
reaches the client as a hang rather than an error.

Both were named by the server's own log, not reasoned about.
`$JS.API.INFO` is the account-level JetStream info every client requests
on connect; `$JS.API.STREAM.NAMES` is how a client finds the stream
backing a bucket. The latter lets a client enumerate stream names in the
account, which in an account holding one bucket discloses a name both
ends already share.

Every earlier measurement missed them, because each either granted
`$JS.API.>` wholesale or ran against a bucket the setup had already
created while unscoped. A minimum established against an existing bucket
is not the minimum for making one, so the leave-one-out that trimmed the
reader's set could not have found this — every candidate it tried was
tried in a world where the bucket existed.

Found by running the shipping gate against the real binary. No unit test
could have: the failure is a timeout inside a real server's permission
check.
2026-08-17 17:34:27 +02:00
..
src fix(#3297): grant the JetStream subjects every client needs first 2026-08-17 17:34:27 +02:00
Cargo.toml feat(#3297): scope a hive's queue grant to its own subjects 2026-08-17 17:34:27 +02:00
README.md docs(swarm): add the swarm-nats-auth package readme 2026-08-15 09:34:33 +02:00

swarm-nats-auth

The auth-callout responder for the swarm's NATS queue — the half that lets the server say yes.

nix/host-modules/swarm-nats.nix configures nats-server with an auth_callout block. That block with no responder is the fail-closed state, and it is the measured one rather than the obvious one: on the pinned nats-server, both authorization { } and authorization { users: [] } answer PONG to an anonymous client, while an auth_callout block sets auth_required and refuses every client no responder has approved. So the module ships the final config from the start and this crate only adds the ability to approve. No interim hole is ever opened.

Why a crate and not more config

The reply is a signed NATS user JWT. Signing needs the account nkey seed and the JWT framing, which is program work — which is why the container and its config landed first and this arrived separately, rather than the pair being one change.

The invariant that is easy to break

issuer_account must be absent from the issued user token. It is an operator-mode field. The module renders server-config mode (accounts { AUTH, APP }, no operator), where its mere presence makes the server refuse the client — Error non operator mode account "AUTH": attempted to use issuer_account — while the responder cheerfully reports granted=true. The account is named by the claims' aud instead.

nats_jwt::Token::new_user always sets it, so reaching for that constructor reintroduces the bug. nats-jwt is a dev-dependency: it cannot express aud on either token, and its role here is as the encoder's test oracle, not part of the path that runs.

Rules the code follows

  • A denial is a signed response carrying an error, never silence. The server cannot tell an absent responder from a refusing one, so staying quiet turns every rejection into a timeout and hides an outage inside what looks like ordinary denials.
  • Anything that is not an explicit {"active": true} denies — including an introspection call that could not be made. The failure modes of an HTTP call are exactly the conditions under which an attacker would most like this to fall open.
  • Every credential is a path, never a value. A value in nix config lands in the world-readable store; a value in argv is readable via /proc/<pid>/cmdline, which is 0444. Paths are not secrets, so passing them as flags is fine.
  • The introspection timeout is pinned below the server's authorization. timeout, with a test asserting the relation — a responder that answers after the server gave up is indistinguishable from one that never answered.

What the tests do and do not cover

Unit tests cover the JWT framing, including byte-equality against nats-jwt on the one shape that crate models. They are not sufficient on their own: this crate's shape is decided by a server that parses what it emits, so the change was also driven against a real nats-server — every refusal repeated with the responder live, because a responder that says yes to everyone passes "a client can connect" perfectly. That harness lives outside this repo; the PR that added this crate links it.

⚠️ Its introspection endpoint is a stub. Those runs prove this crate's own behaviour and nothing about the real authelia integration, which needs a deployment.