Capability Based Access Control#

Capability Based Access Control (CBAC) is a feature access system that enables users and groups to be configured with fine-grained access to various Gravwell features. For example, using CBAC, a user can be configured to have access to search, but not resources or kits. Additionally, CBAC can be used to define which tags are available to users and groups.

CBAC is based around a deny-all default policy. Capabilities and tag access must be granted to each user (or group a user belongs to) in order to access those features. Admin users are not restricted by CBAC and always have full system access.

Enabling CBAC#

CBAC is enabled by adding the following clause to the global section of the webserver’s gravwell.conf and restarting the webserver:

Enable-CBAC=true

Because CBAC has a deny-all default policy, if this is the first time enabling CBAC, all non-admin users will begin with no capabilities or tag access.

Capability Access#

Granting Capabilities to Users and Groups#

Admin users can grant capability and tag access to both users and groups via the Users and Groups view under Administrator->Users and Administrator->Groups.

CBAC User Editor

When creating or editing a user or group, select the “Capabilities” tab and select the capabilities you wish to add. Users that are part of a group will also inherit capabilities from that group. Note how, in the screenshot above, the user has been added to the “foobar” group and is therefore inheriting the Dashboard capabilities assigned to that group.

Tag access is configured by selecting the Tags tab, and selecting the tags the user or group has access to.

Users that don’t have access to a particular feature will see a menu system with those features disabled. For example, a user that does not have access to dashboard or data ingest will see a menu system like this:

CBAC Menu

Granting Capabilities in Practice#

In practice, it is less common to grant capabilities to individual users; instead, administrators create groups with specific roles and assign users to those groups. For example, creating a group named “IT Users” that has access to IT-related tags (syslog, router logs, firewall logs, etc.), and a group named “Incident Response Users” that has access to IDS and other security related data, allows the admin to grant access to users based on their role. Users that need access to both IT and Incident response data in this example can simply be added to both groups.

List of CBAC Capabilities#

Capability Name

Description

Search

Search data and execute queries.

Download

Download search results.

SaveSearch

Save a search and add notes.

AttachSearch

Load a search by search ID.

BackgroundSearch

Execute a search in the background.

SetSearchGroup

Assign a default group to searches.

SearchHistory

View search history of authenticated user

SearchAllHistory

View search history of items user has access to.

SearchGroupHistory

View a group search history

DashboardRead

View and launch dashboard

SearchHistory

View search history of the authenticated user.

SearchAllHistory

View search history of items the user has access to.

SearchGroupHistory

View group search history.

DashboardRead

View and launch a dashboard.

DashboardWrite

Create and edit a dashboard’s searches and settings.

ResourceRead

View a resource and use it in a query.

ResourceWrite

Create and edit a resource.

TemplateRead

View and execute a template.

TemplateWrite

Create and edit a template.

PivotRead

View and click on an actionable.

PivotWrite

Create and edit an actionable.

MacroRead

View and use a macro in a query.

MacroRead

View a macro and use it in a query.

MacroWrite

Create and edit a macro.

LibraryRead

View and execute a saved query.

LibraryWrite

Create and edit a saved query.

ExtractorRead

View and use an extractor in a query.

ExtractorRead

View an extractor and use it in a query.

ExtractorWrite

Create and edit an extractor.

UserFileRead

View a file.

UserFileWrite

Create and edit a file.

KitRead

View a kit and its contents.

KitWrite

Create and edit a kit.

KitBuild

Build a kit.

KitDownload

Download a kit.

ScheduleRead

View a flow, script or scheduled search and its results.

ScheduleWrite

Create and edit a flow, script or scheduled search.

ScheduleRead

View a flow, script, or scheduled search and its results.

ScheduleWrite

Create and edit a flow, script, or scheduled search.

SOARLibs

Import an external library into a script.

SOAREmail

Send an email in a script or a flow.

PlaybookRead

View a playbook.

PlaybookWrite

Create and edit a playbook.

LicenseRead

View the license.

Stats

View health statistics.

Ingest

Ingest data.

ListUsers

View the list of users.

ListGroups

View the list of groups.

ListGroupMembers

View the members of a group.

NotificationRead

View notifications.

NotificationWrite

Create and edit notifications.

SystemInfoRead

View systems.

SystemInfoRead

View systems info.

TokenRead

View API tokens.

TokenWrite

Create and edit an API token.

SecretRead

User can read and access secrets.

SecretWrite

User can create, update, and delete secrets.

SecretRead

Read and access secrets.

SecretWrite

Create, update, and delete secrets.

Determining a CBAC Grant#

A user is granted access based on the combination of capabilities and tags that are granted directly to the user and also those granted to any groups the user belongs to.

For example, user “Bob” has access to Search and Resources (but nothing else), and the “gravwell” tag. Bob is also a member of a group that grants access to “Dashboards” and the “default” tag. As a result, “Bob” has access to Search, Resources, and Dashboards, and both the “gravwell” and “default” tags.

Caveats#

  • Some capabilities require both read and write grants in order to function correctly, such as Resources and Playbooks.

  • The GUI automatically selects read access for a given feature if any of the write capabilities for that feature are selected. If write-only access is needed, you must use the Gravwell command line tool to configure the capability.

  • When CBAC is enabled, the Webserver-Ingest-Groups configuration parameter is ignored.

Tag Access#

When CBAC is enabled, regular users do not have access to any tags by default. Access to tags is granted to users and groups in a similar manner to capabilities. By default, new users do not have access to any tags:

You can add access to individual tags by typing the tag name in the “Find or create new tag grant” bar and hitting enter. In the following screenshot, we have already created a grant for the “default” tag and are prepared to create a new one for “gravwell”:

Tag Globbing#

You can also use glob wildcards to specify multiple tags. For instance, zeek* matches all tags beginning with zeek. Note that even if you don’t have any tags which match the glob yet, you can still add the pattern now and the user will get access to matching tags as they are created.

Group Grants#

As with capabilities, users will inherit tag grants from their groups:

Tag grants for groups are set in the exact same way as user grants.

Tag Grant Shortcuts#

There are two shortcut buttons at the top of the Tag Access section in the user editor page: Grant Existing Tags, and Grant All Possible Tags.

Selecting “Grant Existing Tags” will add individual grants for each tag which currently exists on the system, as shown below. This means that the user will not have access to new tags unless you go in and click the button again!

Selecting “Grant All Possible Tags” adds a wildcard grant *, which matches all possible tags (see screenshot below). Note that this user will be able to access all tags created in the future.