hyperhive/swarm-nats-auth
Repository files (latest commit first)
Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
atlas 8baf1899d8 feat(#3255): name the swarm event subjects, and let the controller publish them
The controller could not emit an event at all: a reader's grant is
`reader_subjects()`, which is `$JS.API.*` only, so a publish to any event
subject would be refused — and a NATS refusal reaches the client as a
timeout, so the visible symptom would have been a hive that never hears
about a change, with nothing in any log naming a permission.

Adds `swarm_queue_client::events`, following `status::BUCKET`: three
crates must agree on these strings (the controller publishes, a hive
subscribes, the callout responder decides whether the publish is
permitted), and a literal repeated across crates is an agreement nothing
checks. The responder speaks neither jetstream nor kv, so the module is
unconditional and carries no NATS types, exactly as the bucket name is.

The grant takes the wildcard form from the same function the publisher
calls, so the two cannot drift; a separate wildcard constant would have
re-created the disagreement this module exists to prevent.

Tests pin that a reader gets the subject and that a hive does NOT — a
hive able to publish here could tell a neighbour the knowledge repo
changed when it had not, which is an unauthenticated write into someone
else's control path. That one asserts on the subject root rather than a
rendered subject, so a future event leaf fails it too instead of passing
because the test only knew about `knowledge`.

Both assertions mutation-tested: removing the grant fails the reader
test, granting a hive the subject fails the denial test, each on its own
assertion line, and the unmutated tree is green.
2026-08-19 21:05:52 +02:00
..
src feat(#3255): name the swarm event subjects, and let the controller publish them 2026-08-19 21:05:52 +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.