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Overview

@relaycorp/awala-keystore-cloud is a Node.js library that implements Awala private key stores across a range of cloud providers and open source backing services, so that server-side apps can be deployed to a wide variety of platforms.

Most of this documentation is aimed at operators of those server-side apps using this library. To get help, learn how to integrate this library or contribute to this library, please refer to the GitHub project.

The following platforms are currently supported:

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

The GCP key store only uses Cloud KMS, which is serverless and fully managed by Google, so you don't need to worry about up/down scaling or uptime/performance monitoring. We protect sensitive cryptographic material with Cloud KMS as follows:

  • Awala identity key pairs (used for digital signatures) are stored in and fully managed by Cloud KMS. Cloud KMS performs all the cryptographic operations. Neither this library nor the app using it can access the private key.
  • Awala session key pairs (used for encryption) are stored in MongoDB, encrypted with a customer-managed KMS key and using Additional Authenticated Data (AAD) for extra security. We wish these too were stored in KMS, but KMS doesn't currently support the algorithms we require.

As of this writing, the library complies with all of KMS' data integrity guidelines.

All the metadata about the keys are stored on MongoDB.

Resources

You should provision the following in GCP:

  • A KMS key ring containing the following keys:
    • An asymmetric signing key (RSA-PSS, 2048 or 4096 bits, and SHA-256 or SHA-512). Do not provision a key version as it wouldn't be used. The library will use RSA_SIGN_PSS_2048_SHA256 by default.
    • A symmetric encryption key, along with a key version.
  • A service account.

This library will provision and manage the key versions in the KMS signing key.

IAM Permissions

Private key store

Identity keys:

  • Create identity key pair:
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeys.get on the KMS signing key.
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.create on the KMS signing key.
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.viewPublicKey on the newly-created KMS signing key version.
  • Retrieve identity key: None.
  • Sign with identity key:
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.useToSign on the KMS signing key version.
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.viewPublicKey on the KMS signing key version, when issuing a certificate.

Session keys:

  • Create session key pair:
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.useToEncrypt on the KMS encryption key.
  • Retrieve session key pair:
    • cloudkms.cryptoKeyVersions.useToDecrypt on the KMS encryption key.
  • Encrypt or decrypt with key pair: No additional permissions needed once key pair is in memory.

Recommendations

Limitations

  • The app server must be located in the same project and region.