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Per-session MFA

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Teleport supports requiring additional multi-factor authentication checks when starting new:

  • SSH connections (a single tsh ssh call, Web UI SSH session or Teleport Connect SSH session)
  • Kubernetes sessions (a single kubectl call)
  • Database sessions (a single tsh db connect call)
  • Application sessions
  • Desktop sessions

This is an advanced security feature that protects users against compromises of their on-disk Teleport certificates.

Per-session MFA checks can be satisfied by a webauthn device or by delegating MFA checks to your IdP.

note

In addition to per-session MFA, enable login MFA in your SSO provider and/or for all local Teleport users to improve security.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster. If you do not have one, read Getting Started.

  • The tctl and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

  • To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials. For example, run the following command, assigning teleport.example.com to the domain name of the Teleport Proxy Service in your cluster and email@example.com to your Teleport username: 
    tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
    tctl status
    Cluster  teleport.example.com
    Version  19.0.0-dev
    CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
    If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.
  • WebAuthn configured on this cluster
  • Hardware device for multi-factor authentication, such as YubiKey or SoloKey
  • A Web browser with WebAuthn support (if using SSH or desktop sessions from the Teleport Web UI).
Per-session MFA with FIPS

Teleport FIPS builds disable local users. To configure WebAuthn in order to use per-session MFA with FIPS builds, provide the following in your teleport.yaml:

teleport:
  auth_service:
    local_auth: false
    second_factors: ["webauthn"]
    webauthn:
      rp_id: teleport.example.com

Configure per-session MFA​

Per-session MFA can be enforced cluster-wide or only for some specific roles.

Cluster-wide​

To enforce MFA checks for all roles, edit your cluster authentication configuration.

Edit your cluster_auth_preference resource:

tctl edit cap

Ensure that the resource contains the following content:

kind: cluster_auth_preference
metadata:
  name: cluster-auth-preference
spec:
  require_session_mfa: true
version: v2

Apply your changes by saving and closing the file in your editor.

Per role​

To enforce MFA checks for a specific role, update the role to contain:

kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: example-role-with-mfa
spec:
  options:
    # require per-session MFA for this role
    require_session_mfa: true
  allow:
    ...
  deny:
    ...

Role-specific enforcement only applies when accessing resources matching a role's allow section.

Roles example​

Let's walk through an example of setting up per-session MFA checks for roles.

Jerry is an engineer with access to the company infrastructure. The infrastructure is split into development and production environments. Security engineer Olga wants to enforce MFA checks for accessing production servers. Development servers don't require this to reduce engineers' friction.

Olga defines two Teleport roles: access-dev and access-prod:

# access-dev.yaml
kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: access-dev
spec:
  allow:
    node_labels:
      env: dev
    logins:
      - jerry
---
# access-prod.yaml
kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: access-prod
spec:
  options:
    # require per-session MFA for production access
    require_session_mfa: true
  allow:
    node_labels:
      env: prod
    logins:
      - jerry
  deny: {}

Olga then assigns both roles to all engineers, including Jerry.

When Jerry logs into node dev1.example.com (with label env: dev as login jerry), nothing special happens:

tsh ssh jerry@dev1.example.com

jerry@dev1.example.com >

But when Jerry logs into node rod3.example.com (with label env: prod as login jerry), he gets prompted for an MFA check:

tsh ssh jerry@prod3.example.com
Tap any security key <tap>

jerry@prod3.example.com >

If per-session MFA was enabled cluster-wide, Jerry would be prompted for MFA even when logging into dev1.example.com.

Per-session MFA for Database Access

The Teleport Database Service supports per-connection MFA. When Jerry connects to the database prod-mysql-instance (with label env: prod), he gets prompted for an MFA check for each tsh db connect or tsh proxy db call:

tsh db connect prod-mysql-instance
Tap any security key

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 10002
Server version: 8.0.0-Teleport (Ubuntu)
Copyright (c) 2000, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql>

Jerry can also execute a query against multiple databases with a single MFA check using the tsh db exec command:

tsh db exec "select 1" --labels env=prod --db-user teleport-user --output-dir=logs
Searching databases ...Found 2 database(s):
Name                  Description Protocol Labels--------------------- ----------- -------- --------prod-mysql-instance-1             mysql    env=prodprod-mysql-instance-2             mysql    env=prod
Do you want to proceed with 2 database(s)? [y/N]: yExecuting command for "prod-mysql-instance-1". Output will be saved at "logs/prod-mysql-instance-1.output".MFA is required to access Database "prod-mysql-instance-1"Tap any security keyDetected security key tapExecuting command for "prod-mysql-instance-2". Output will be saved at "logs/prod-mysql-instance-2.output".
Summary: 2 of 2 succeeded.Summary is saved at "logs/summary.json".

Note that each MFA check remains valid for up to 5 minutes. After the 5-minutes window, a new MFA check will be requested for new connections.

Limitations​

Current limitations for this feature are:

  • For SSH connections besides the Web UI, the tsh or Teleport Connect client must be used for per-session MFA. (The OpenSSH ssh client does not work with per-session MFA).
  • Only kubectl supports per-session WebAuthn authentication for Kubernetes.
  • For desktop access, only WebAuthn devices are supported.
  • When accessing a multi-port TCP application through VNet, the first connection over each port triggers an MFA check.
  • For the tsh db exec command, only WebAuthn devices are supported.

Next steps​