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GCP Threats
Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled
More Info:
Disable Client Certificates, which require certificate rotation, for authentication. Instead, use another authentication method like OpenID Connect.
Risk Level
Low
Address
Security, Reliability, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency
Compliance Standards
SOC2, NISTCSF, PCIDSS
Triage and Remediation
Remediation
To remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled” in GCP using GCP console, you can follow the below steps:
-
Open the GCP Console and navigate to the Security Command Center.
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From the Security Command Center dashboard, select the project that you want to remediate.
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Click on the “Policy” tab and search for the policy “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled”.
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Click on the policy to view the list of non-compliant resources.
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Click on the non-compliant resource that you want to remediate.
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In the “Resource Details” page, click on the “Remediate” button.
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In the “Remediation” dialog box, select the option “Disable client certificate authentication”.
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Click on the “Remediate” button to apply the remediation.
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Once the remediation is applied, the policy status will change to “Compliant”.
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Verify that the policy is now compliant by checking the policy status and the resource details page.
By following these steps, you can remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled” in GCP using GCP console.
To remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled” for GCP using GCP CLI, follow the below steps:
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Open the Cloud Shell in the GCP console.
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Run the following command to list all the backend services in the current project:
gcloud compute backend-services list -
Identify the backend service that needs to be remediated and note down its name.
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Run the following command to describe the backend service:
gcloud compute backend-services describe [BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME]Replace
[BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME]with the name of the backend service identified in step 3. -
In the output, locate the
securityPolicyfield. If this field is set to a security policy that enforces client certificate authentication, then client certificate authentication is enabled. To disable it, you need to set thesecurityPolicyfield tonull. -
Run the following command to update the backend service and disable client certificate authentication:
gcloud compute backend-services update [BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME] --no-security-policyReplace
[BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME]with the name of the backend service identified in step 3. -
Verify that the misconfiguration has been remediated by running the command in step 4 again and checking that the
securityPolicyfield is now set tonull.
By following these steps, you can remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates Is Disabled” for GCP using GCP CLI.
To remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates is Disabled” for GCP using Python, you can follow these steps:
- First, you need to authenticate with GCP using a service account key file. You can create a service account and download the key file from the GCP console. Then, set the environment variable
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALSto the path of the key file.
import os
from google.oauth2 import service_account
# Replace [PATH_TO_KEY_FILE] with the path to your service account key file
key_path = '[PATH_TO_KEY_FILE]'
credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(key_path)
os.environ['GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS'] = key_path
- Next, you can use the
google-cloud-resource-managerlibrary to retrieve a list of all projects in your GCP organization.
from google.cloud import resource_manager
client = resource_manager.Client(credentials=credentials)
projects = list(client.list_projects())
- For each project, you can use the
google-cloud-computelibrary to retrieve a list of all instances in the project.
from google.cloud import compute_v1
compute_client = compute_v1.InstancesClient(credentials=credentials)
for project in projects:
instances = list(compute_client.list(project=project.project_id))
- For each instance, you can check if client certificate authentication is enabled by checking the
clientCertEnabledfield in the instance’smetadata.
for instance in instances:
metadata = compute_client.get_iam_policy(instance=instance.self_link)
if metadata.items.get('clientCertEnabled', {}).get('value', '') == 'true':
# Client certificate authentication is enabled
- To disable client certificate authentication, you can update the instance’s metadata using the
google-cloud-computelibrary.
from google.cloud.compute_v1.types import Instance
metadata = compute_client.get_iam_policy(instance=instance.self_link)
metadata.items['clientCertEnabled'] = Instance.Metadata.Items.Value(value='false')
compute_client.set_metadata(instance=instance.self_link, metadata=metadata)
- Finally, you can confirm that client certificate authentication is disabled by checking the
clientCertEnabledfield in the instance’s updated metadata.
metadata = compute_client.get_iam_policy(instance=instance.self_link)
if metadata.items.get('clientCertEnabled', {}).get('value', '') == 'false':
# Client certificate authentication is disabled
By following these steps, you can remediate the misconfiguration “Ensure Authentication Using Client Certificates is Disabled” for GCP using Python.