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DataStax Enterprise 6.8 Security Guide

    • About DSE Advanced Security
    • Security FAQs
    • Security checklists
    • Securing the environment
      • Securing ports
      • Securing the TMP directory
    • Authentication and authorization
      • Configuring authentication and authorization
        • About DSE Unified Authentication
          • Steps for new deployment
          • Steps for production environments
        • Configuring security keyspaces
        • Setting up Kerberos
          • Kerberos guidelines
          • Enabling JCE Unlimited
            • Removing AES-256
          • Preparing DSE nodes for Kerberos
            • DNS and NTP
            • krb5.conf
            • Principal
            • Keytab
        • Enabling authentication and authorization
          • Defining a Kerberos scheme
          • Defining an LDAP scheme
        • Configuring JMX authentication
        • Configuring cache settings
        • Securing schema information
      • Managing database access
        • About RBAC
        • Setting up logins and users
          • Adding a superuser login
          • Adding database users
          • LDAP users and groups
            • LDAP logins
            • LDAP groups
          • Kerberos principal logins
          • Setting up roles for applications
          • Binding a role to an authentication scheme
        • Assigning permissions
          • Database object permissions
            • Data resources
            • Functions and aggregate resources
            • Search indexes
            • Roles
            • Proxy login and execute
            • Authentication schemes
            • DSE Utilities (MBeans)
            • Analytic applications
            • Remote procedure calls
          • Separation of duties
          • Keyspaces and tables
          • Row Level Access Control (RLAC)
          • Search index permissions
          • DataStax Graph keyspace
          • Spark application permissions
          • DataStax Studio permissions
          • Remote procedure calls
          • DSE client-tool spark
          • JMX MBean permissions
          • Deny (denylist) db object permission
          • Restricting access to data
      • Providing credentials from DSE tools
        • About clients
        • Internal and LDAP authentication
          • Command line
          • File
          • Environment variables
          • Using CQLSH
        • Kerberos
          • JAAS configuration file location
          • Keytab
          • Ticket Cache
          • Spark jobs
          • SSTableLoader
          • Graph and gremlin-console
          • dsetool
          • CQLSH
        • Nodetool
        • JConsole
    • Auditing database activity
      • Enabling database auditing
      • Capturing DSE Search HTTP requests
      • Log formats
      • View events from DSE audit table
    • Transparent data encryption
      • About Transparent Data Encryption
      • Configuring local encryption
        • Setting up local encryption keys
        • Encrypting configuration file properties
        • Encrypting system resources
        • Encrypting tables
        • Rekeying existing data
        • Using tools with TDE-encrypted SSTables
        • Troubleshooting encryption key errors
      • Configuring KMIP encryption
      • Encrypting Search indexes
        • Encrypting new Search indexes
        • Encrypting existing Search indexes
        • Tuning encrypted Search indexes
      • Migrating encrypted tables from earlier versions
      • Bulk loading data between TDE-enabled clusters
    • Configuring SSL
      • Steps for configuring SSL
      • Creating SSL certificates, keystores, and truststores
        • Remote keystore provider
        • Local keystore files
      • Securing node-to-node connections
      • Securing client-to-node connections
        • Configuring JMX on the server side
        • nodetool, nodesync, dsetool, and Advanced Replication
        • JConsole (JMX)
        • SSTableloader
        • Connecting to SSL-enabled nodes using cqlsh
      • Enabling SSL encryption for DSEFS
      • Reference: SSL instruction variables
    • Securing Spark connections
  • DataStax Enterprise 6.8 Security Guide
  • Authentication and authorization
  • Managing database access
  • Setting up logins and users
  • Adding a superuser login

Adding a Superuser Login

After enabling role-based access control, create your own superuser account and disable or drop the default cassandra account. Roles created with the superuser option have full access to the database; users with the superuser role can run any CQL commands on all database resources.

Only provide superuser roles to a limited number of users.

When using LDAP group management (role_management_options).

mode: ldap), to prevent unintentional role assignment, set authentication_options. scheme_permissions: true and bind the superuser role to the internal scheme (see Binding a role to an authentication scheme).

The DataStax Enterprise database includes the default role cassandra with password cassandra. The cassandra role is a superuser login account that has full access to the database. Requests from the cassandra account, including login, use a consistency level of QUORUM. QUORUM may cause significant performance degradation in multiple datacenter environments. For security and performance, DataStax recommends using the cassandra role only once during initial role-based access control (RBAC) set up to establish your own root account and then disabling or dropping the cassandra role.

Requests from all other authenticated accounts have a consistency level of LOCAL_ONE. See How is the consistency level configured? for more details.

Prerequisites

Isolate the DSE cluster and enable RBAC, see Setting up logins and users.

Procedure

  1. Log in to CQL shell (cqlsh) with the cassandra user:

    cqlsh -u cassandra -p cassandra
  2. Create a new superuser account with password stored in the CQL database:

    CREATE ROLE <root_user_name>
      WITH SUPERUSER = true
      AND LOGIN = true
      AND PASSWORD = '<password>';

    or create the new superuser account with a hashed password:

    CREATE ROLE <root_user_name>
      WITH SUPERUSER = true
      AND LOGIN = true
      AND HASHED PASSWORD = '<hashed_password>';
  3. Exit cqlsh:

    EXIT;
  4. In order to disable or drop the cassandra role, log in with the new role created in the previous step:

    cqlsh -u <root_user>

    Enter the password at the prompt.

  5. Verify that the role was created as a superuser using LIST ROLES:

    LIST ROLES;
     role                | super | login | options
    ---------------------+-------+-------+---------
               root_user |  True |  True |        {}
               cassandra |  True |  True |        {}
    (2 rows)
  6. Drop or update the cassandra account:

    • Drop the cassandra account:

      DROP ROLE cassandra;
    • Update the cassandra role by disabling superuser and changing the password:

      ALTER ROLE cassandra
        WITH SUPERUSER = false
        AND LOGIN = false
        AND PASSWORD='new_secret_pw';

      or with a hashed password:

      ALTER ROLE cassandra
      WITH SUPERUSER = false
      AND LOGIN = false
      AND HASHED PASSWORD='$2a$10$4N5j5py12OySiSy9L2RHduOjFFetJ1d9hqCoZYtQC3kJOwdg3hbOC';

    DataStax recommends dropping the account to secure the database in production environments. When using an external authentication method, such as LDAP, this prevents accidentally assignment with elevated privileges.

  7. Verify that the cassandra role was deleted:

    LIST ROLES;

    Only the roles created in these steps display:

     role                | super | login | options
    ---------------------+-------+-------+---------
               root_user |  True |  True |        {}
    
    (1 rows)
  8. Reopen the firewall to support production CQL traffic.

What is Next

Set up roles that map to the user or group names for the configured authentication schemes:

Adding Database Users

Setting up logins and users Adding database users

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