Monday 5 June 2017

Security Best Practices For Developing Windows Azure Applications


  
Authors

Andrew Marshall (Senior Security Program Manager, Security Engineering) Michael Howard (Principal Security Program Manager, Security Engineering) Grant Bugher (Lead Security Program Manager, OSSC)
Brian Harden (Security Architect, OSSC)

Contributors

Charlie Kaufman (Principal Architect) Martin Rues (Director, OSSC)
Vittorio Bertocci (Senior Technical Evangelist, Developer and Platform Evangelism)





June 2010 (REVISION 2)



The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only.  MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS,

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The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.






Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................................................... 5

INTENDED AUDIENCE............................................................................................................................ 5

OVERVIEW OF WINDOWS AZURE SECURITY-­‐RELATED PLATFORM SERVICES................................................... 6

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT AND ACCESS CONTROL.............................................................................................................................. 6

WINDOWS IDENTITY FOUNDATION.................................................................................................................................................. 6

ACTIVE DIRECTORY FEDERATION SERVICES 2.0................................................................................................................................ 7

WINDOWS AZURE PLATFORM APPFABRIC ACCESS CONTROL SERVICE............................................................................................. 7

DESIGNING MORE SECURE WINDOWS AZURE SERVICES............................................................................... 8

WINDOWS AZURE SERVICE-­‐LAYER SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS...................................................................................................... 8

Namespace Configura1on Issues......................................................................................................................................... 9

Data Security........................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Handling Secret Informa1on............................................................................................................................................. 10

Audi1ng and Logging........................................................................................................................................................ 10

Request ThroEling / Input Sani1za1on............................................................................................................................ 11

WINDOWS AZURE PLATFORM-­‐ & INFRASTRUCTURE-­‐LAYER SECURITY PROTECTIONS................................................................. 11

Port Scanning/ Service Enumera1on................................................................................................................................ 11

Denial of Service.................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Spoofing............................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Eavesdropping / Packet Sniffing....................................................................................................................................... 12

Mul1-­‐tenant hos1ng and side-­‐channel aEacks......................................................................................................... 12

External Verifica1on............................................................................................................................................................ 12







APPLYING SDL PRACTICES TO WINDOWS AZURE APPLICATIONS................................................................. 16

SECURITY EDUCATION AND AWARENESS....................................................................................................................................... 16

SECURE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES ON THE WINDOWS AZURE PLATFORM.................................................................................... 17

VERIFICATION AND RELEASE......................................................................................................................................................... 18

CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................... 18

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES..................................................................................................................... 19








Executive Summary

As businesses seek to cost-effectively consume IT services, interest is growing in moving computation and storage from on-premise equipment to Internet-based systems, often referred to as “the cloud."

Cloud computing is not restricted to large enterprises; small companies benefit greatly from moving computing and storage resources to systems such as Windows Azure. In fact, smaller companies are adopting this new paradigm faster than larger companies1.

The idea that purchasing services from a cloud service provider may allow businesses to save money while they focus on their core business is an enticing proposition. Many analysts view the emerging possibilities for pricing and delivering services online as disruptive to market conditions. Market studies and the ensuing dialogue among prospective customers and service providers reveal some consistent themes and potential barriers to the rapid adoption of cloud services. Business decision makers want to know, for example, how to address key issues of security, privacy and reliability in the Microsoft Cloud Computing environment, and they are concerned as well about the implications of cloud services for their risk and operations decisions.

This paper focuses on the security challenges and recommended approaches to design and develop more secure applications for Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. Microsoft Security Engineering Center (MSEC) and Microsoft’s Online Services Security & Compliance (OSSC) team have partnered with the Windows Azure team to build on the same security principles and processes that Microsoft has developed through years of experience managing security risks in traditional development and operating environments.

Intended Audience

This paper is intended to be a resource for technical software audiences: software designers, architects, developers and testers who design, build and deploy more secure Windows Azure solutions.

This paper is organized into two sections2:
       Overview of Windows Azure security-related platform services; and

        Best practices for secure design, development and deployment:

Service-layer/application security considerations
Protections provided by the Azure platform and underlying network infrastructure.

Sample design patterns for hardened/reduced-privilege services.


1  “Cloud Computing: Small Companies Take Flight” BusinessWeek http:// www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc2008083_619516.htm

2  The distinction between “security features” and “secure features” is an important one. “Security features” are the technologies, such as authentication or encryption that can help protect a system and its data. “Secure features” are technologies that are resilient to attack,



such as encryption key storage and management or code with no known vulnerabilities


Overview of Windows Azure security-related platform services

The following sections describe some of the platform services and security functionality available to developers who build applications on Windows Azure.

Identity Management and Access Control

Identity management has emerged as an increasingly complex issue for developers, and proper identity management remains a priority, even as business networks change. Identity management is as much about preventing unauthorized third-party access to data as it is about controlling the authorized use of data. Identity management helps systems control the amount and type of data that users can access, and it helps ensure that users are performing necessary functions at the lowest-possible privilege levels. Identity management is also critical for maintaining separation of roles and duties, which may be required by specific regulatory and compliance standards.

Today, developers face a common challenge: To provide authorized users, clients and systems with access to the data they require at any time, from any technology, in any location, while meeting basic security requirements for confidentiality, availability and integrity. At first glance, cloud computing technology might seem inappropriate or poorly suited to meet such rigorous standards: Developers seek to restrict access to data that exists in a comparatively uncontrolled environment (cloud), and that data may be co-mingled with resources that are owned by someone else. Those concerns, while legitimate, can be effectively addressed by using claims-based identity.

Claims-based identity, an approach to authentication and access management based on open protocols, is an access control strategy that is consistently applied across the full range of Microsoft product and services. One of the key properties of claims-based identity is that it reduces infrastructure dependencies because applications protected with claims-based identity can be hosted on-premises or in the cloud without changes. Applications targeting Windows Azure can take advantage of the same developer tools, identity management features and services that are available to their on-premises counterparts.

Below is a list of the most relevant identity technologies and services that can work with Windows Azure to protect applications and resources.
       Windows Identity Foundation

        Active Directory Federation Services 2.0

        Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service

Windows Identity Foundation

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is the latest addition to the foundational technologies in the .NET Framework. It enables .NET developers to offload the identity logic from their application, providing a solid development model based on separation of concerns. Non-experts can easily secure their applications without being exposed to the underlying complexity of cryptography and protocols, leveraging Visual Studio integration features such as point-and-click wizards which result in applications protected using open, interoperable standards such as WS-Federation and WS-Trust.



Despite the easy to use programming model, which unifies ASP.NET web applications and (Windows Communication Foundation) WCF SOAP services under a single object model, Windows Identity Foundation has a full range of security of features offered by WS-Security, the SAML token format and many other enterprise-grade industry standards.

When using Windows Identity Foundation the mechanics of authentication are provided by external services, using platform-independent protocols. The application receives information about authenticated users in forms of claims, which can be used for simple or traditional role-base access control (RBAC) to sophisticated access control policies.

Because open standards are used, the authentication can take place regardless of where the user accounts are maintained or where the application is hosted: as a result, single sign on (SSO) across on-premises and Windows Azure hosted resources is easily achieved.

Although the authentication services can be provided from any platform complying with the open protocols used by Windows Identity Foundation, the best way to leverage existing investments in the Windows infrastructure is to outsource authentication to Active Directory Federation Services 2.0.

Active Directory Federation Services 2.0

Although Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 (AD FS 2.0) is a technology that can be deployed on-premises, it can play a key role in enabling authentication for Windows Azure applications.

AD FS 2.0 is a Windows Server role that extends Active Directory (AD) with claims-based identity capabilities. AD FS 2.0 provides AD with a Security Token Service (STS) which is a single interface enabling existing users to authenticate using applications regardless of whether they are hosted in a data center, at one partner’s site, or in the cloud. Users are no longer constrained by the boundaries of their local network: if an application hosted in Windows Azure has been developed using Windows Identity Foundation (or an equivalent stack complying with the same open standards), AD FS 2.0 allows instantly granting anybody with an account in the local directory access to this application. All without requiring any form of synchronization, new account provisioning or duplication.

AD FS 2.0 facilitates the establishment and maintenance of trust relationships with federated partners, simplifying access to resources and distributed single sign-on.

AD FS 2.0 implements standards such as WS-Trust, WS-Federation and the SAML protocol, and successfully passed the latest public Liberty Alliance SAML 2.0 interoperability testing which proved out-of-the-box interoperability with products from IBM, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP, Siemens and many others.

Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Service

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control (AC) service is a hosted service that provides federated authentication and rules-driven, claims-based authorization for REST Web services. REST Web services can rely on AC for simple username/password scenarios, in addition to enterprise integration scenarios that use Active Directory Federation Services 2.0.

Applications exposing REST Web services can take advantage of the AC regardless of where they are deployed, either on-premises, in Windows Azure, or anywhere else where an internet connection is available. AC allows customers to achieve true externalization of authorization policies, offering the chance of decoupling applications from most of their authorization logic by hosting it (in the form of claims transformation rules) at the AC itself.



The AC leverages the OAuth Web Resource Authorization Protocol (OAuth WRAP), a lightweight protocol which makes it possible to take advantage of claims-based identity with REST-based APIs, without imposing strong requirements on clients and service providers: this enables unprecedented reach, enabling a wide array of device types and communication stacks to participate in secure transactions. OAuth WRAP is the basis for the upcoming Oauth 2.0 specification, a protocol which is catalyzing the consensus of the key players in the Web space.

AC is also capable of bridging the enterprise identity and the REST worlds, thanks to its capability of using SAML tokens issued by an AD FS 2.0 instance for accessing REST services via OAuth WRAP protocol.

Future releases of the AC will, among many others, support the protocols implemented by WIF and ADFS 2.0 natively, ensuring seamless integration across solutions based on those technologies

Designing More Secure Windows Azure Services

When it comes to cloud-based solutions, it is more important for software designers and developers to anticipate threats at design time than is the case with traditional boxed-product software deployed on servers in a corporate datacenter. This section highlights some specific threats that developers are responsible for mitigating in the cloud and describes the protections that Windows Azure provides against an array of service-, platform- and infrastructure-layer security threats.

Windows Azure Service-layer security considerations

The threat landscape for a cloud-based web service is substantially different from traditional hosted web services in terms of mitigating tools and technologies. Threats also vary dramatically among cloud providers. Appendix B contains a security threat matrix specific to Windows Azure. This matrix can be used to help identify which security threats are most important for an application.

The key points are as follows:

       Developers must map the traditional on-premise enterprise security requirements of their application or service to Windows Azure platform services that provide comparable functionality. Any remaining

threats must be mitigated by the application or service. Consult Appendix B for details about specific mitigations.

       Understand the security requirements of the service being designed or migrated, especially in the context of authentication, authorization and auditing. The platform services which provide these features (Windows Identity Foundation, Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service, Windows

Azure Monitoring and Diagnostic APIs) and the methods developers use to invoke them are substantially different from those provided in an on-premise enterprise deployment (Kerberos, Active Directory, Windows Event Logs).
       Leverage Windows Azure platform services to build more secure applications.


Despite some of the protections that moving to the cloud may offer, developers are still responsible for writing good code -- and they are still responsible for the security of their applications when dealing with threats to the web service code itself. Input field constraint, sanitization and validation are still the most important ways to help protect a web service application, whether it is a cloud-based application or not. Windows Azure runs web



roles in Internet Information Services 7 Hosted Web Core. Because of IIS7’s secure default configuration, developers inherit some basic IIS7 protections, such as the ValidateRequest configuration setting.

Developers must mitigate cross-site scripting attacks by encoding and validating inputs to their services with the Microsoft Anti-Cross-Site-Scripting library or other similar libraries, especially if that input is displayed back to the user in a web page. Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks must also be mitigated by setting a hidden session token in client requests and setting Page.ViewStateUserKey to the current session ID.

Namespace Configuration Issues

Here are a few more configuration issues to be aware of in the cloud:

       Avoid using *servicename*.cloudapp.net domain name - use a custom domain name instead. An important distinction between the enterprise and the cloud is that the cloudapp.net namespace is shared among all Azure customers while the namespace Microsoft.com is wholly-owned and controlled by Microsoft. This means that the cloudapp.net namespace is inherently less trusted than the domain namespace of a single enterprise because one customer of Windows Azure does not automatically

trust all other customers in that domain namespace. Don’t create code that requires users to place cloudapp.net in the trusted sites list in their web browser.

      Never scope cookies or document.domain to cloudapp.net. Instead, scope to the service subdomain (such as contoso.cloudapp.net, for example or, better, www.contoso.com).

For most content, only interactions with content from the same domain are allowed. For example, a typical page on www.microsoft.com can freely script content on any other page on www.microsoft.com, but it cannot script to pages that are located on a different Web domain. The DHTML Object Model uses the document.domain property to enforce this restriction. Only pages with identical domain properties are allowed free interaction. The protocol of the URL must also match. For example, an HTTP page cannot access HTTPS content.

Important: Any attempt to broaden document.domain access can leave a service open to scripting attacks from the entire cloudapp.net domain namespace. IIS7 sets document.domain to the full subdomain by default (like contoso.cloudapp.net or www.microsoft.com), but the scoping is so often changed by web developers that it warrants mention.

Data Security

When designing Web Role interactions with Windows Azure Storage, Shared Access Signatures can be a powerful tool. Shared Access Signatures are effectively access tokens that bestow a set of rights against a blob or blob container that normally would not be set public. Since web applications are responsible for generating these tokens, they are also responsible for securely distributing them. In the event that one of these tokens is compromised, developers can either update the blob/container metadata to invalidate the token, or simply create a new container for the blob data. However, this is still a reactive measure taken after damage could have already been done. Outlined, below are guidelines for minimizing risk while using Shared Access Signatures.

       Generate Shared Access Signatures with the most restrictive set of ACLs possible that still grant the access required by the trusted party.

       Use the shortest lifetime possible.


       Use HTTPS in the request URL so the token cannot be snooped on the wire.

       Remember that these tokens are only used for temporary access to non-public blob storage – as with passwords, it’s a bad idea to use the same ones over and over.

Windows Azure table storage provides a simple structured storage environment and is not SQL-based, so common SQL injection vulnerabilities do not apply to an application that uses it. However, applications using SQL Azure or other relational database services still need to mitigate traditional SQL injection threats.

Table storage requests are either made directly, using HTTP GET and POST requests, or they are translated into these requests by the SDK and LINQ. Since HTTP requests are text, if this request string were constructed based on data gathered from users, then the user’s strings could possibly change the semantics of the request (e.g. by inserting carriage returns or & characters.) To avoid injection attacks, do not base any container names, blob names, blocks, block IDs, or table names on data gathered from users. When constructing a REST query that involves user data, help ensure the data’s safety by URL encoding before concatenating it into the query.

Handling Secret Information

Currently there is no support for Data Protection API (DPAPI)-like persistence of secret data in Windows Azure Storage. If a service must encrypt secret data at rest within Windows Azure Storage, then it needs to encrypt that data offsite, and before uploading the encrypted payload to blob storage. This can be done easily with an AES key generated on a client machine or elsewhere within the enterprise. Also, developers should not upload the key or any keying material to Windows Azure Storage, regardless of how careful they are about hiding it. If any computer or storage services were compromised, it could lead to encryption keys being exposed. Microsoft recommends using 256-bit AES keys for symmetric encryption.

Developers also should not store private keys associated with SSL/TLS certificates in Windows Azure Storage. Instead, upload them through the Developer Portal and access them via thumbprint references in the Service Configuration. Windows Azure will not only store these certificates encrypted at all times, but also securely provision them into the certificate stores of the service’s web roles upon boot. Developers should not attempt to store certificates anywhere on their own as these actions would constitute re-inventing a protection already supplied by the platform.

Sample code that shows how to install certificates in Windows Azure is available at http://blogs.msdn.com/ jnak/archive/2010/01/29/installing-certificates-in-windows-azure-vms.aspx.

Appendix D contains security best practices for cryptography usage.

Auditing and Logging

Local VM disk access by Windows Azure roles should be considered temporary and not reliable for anything more than temp files and caching. On Windows Azure, events are not written to application, security, or audit event logs as they are on Windows servers. Instead, events data is logged to Windows Azure Storage through the Monitoring and Diagnostics Agent via trace listeners in web application code. The logs are then stored long-term in Windows Azure Storage via scheduled transfers performed by the Monitoring Agent.

Windows Azure Table Storage is used to log certain types of events, including Windows Event and Diagnostics Logs, Windows Azure Logs and performance counters.



Windows Azure does not currently support encryption-at-rest of table storage information, so developers should not write sensitive information to any events stored in Windows Azure Table Storage. Refer to “Handling Secret Information” on page 8 for more information about encrypting sensitive data.

Developers must decide to use HTTP or HTTPS depending on the contents of the logs. If an application is logging a large amount of data that won’t be of interest to outside parties or eavesdroppers, then HTTP can be used for a faster transfer. However, Microsoft recommends protecting all log data in transit to Windows Azure Storage by using HTTPS.

Request Throttling / Input Sanitization

Developers must do application-level throttling of incoming requests for any kind of complex, time-intensive operation.

It is also important to fuzz test any new parsers deployed as part of a web service. The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) portal at http://www.microsoft.com/sdl provides resources on fuzzing parsers. If a service is parsing a proprietary file or request format (perhaps encapsulated inside HTTP), then fuzz test it to ensure the code can correctly accommodate malformed input. Generally speaking, an automated fuzzing framework that fuzzes 100,000 iterations of each new format or protocol without crashing, or runs non-stop for 24 hours, will give developers a good indication of threat resistance. This is the fuzzing requirement that Microsoft currently applies to “boxed-product” software.

Windows Azure Platform- & Infrastructure-layer security protections

This section outlines security threats that are mitigated on developers’ behalf by the Windows Azure platform and underlying network infrastructure.

Port Scanning/ Service Enumeration

The only ports open and addressable (internally or externally) on a Windows Azure VM are those explicitly defined in the Service Definition file. Windows Firewall is enabled on each VM in addition to enhanced VM switch packet filtering, which blocks unauthorized traffic

Denial of Service

Windows Azure’s load balancing will partially mitigate Denial of Service attacks from the Internet and internal networks. This mitigation is done in conjunction with the developer defining an appropriate Service Definition VM instance count scale-out. On the Internet, Windows Azure VMs are only accessible through public Virtual IP Addresses (VIPs). VIP traffic is routed through Windows Azure’s load-balancing infrastructure. Windows Azure monitors and detects internally initiated Denial of Service attacks and removes offending VMs/accounts from the network. As a further protection, the root host OS that controls guest VMs in the cloud is not directly addressable internally by other tenants on the Windows Azure network and the root host OS is not externally addressable.

Windows Azure is also reviewing additional Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) solutions available from Microsoft Global Foundation Services to help further protect against Denial of Service attacks.

Spoofing

VLANs are used to partition the internal network and segment it in a way that prevents compromised nodes from impersonating trusted systems such as the Fabric Controller. At the Hypervisor VM Switch, additional filters are in place to block broadcast and multicast traffic, with the exception of what is needed to maintain DHCP leases. Furthermore, the channel used by the Root OS to communicate with the Fabric Controller is



encrypted and mutually authenticated over an HTTPS connection, and it provides a secure transfer path for configuration and certificate information that cannot be intercepted.

Eavesdropping / Packet Sniffing

The Hypervisor’s Virtual Switch prevents sniffer-based attacks against other VMs on the same physical host. Top-of-rack switches will be used to restrict which IP and MAC addresses can be used by the VMs and therefore mitigate spoofing attacks on internal networks. To sniff the wire inside the Windows Azure cloud environment, an attacker would first need to compromise a VM tenant in a way that elevated the attacker to an administrator on the VM, then use a vulnerability in the hypervisor to break into the physical machine root OS and obtain system account privileges. At that point the attacker would only be able to see traffic inbound to the compromised host destined for the dynamic IP addresses of the VM guests controlled by the hypervisor.

Multi-tenant hosting and side-channel attacks

Information disclosure attacks (such as sniffing) are less severe than other forms of attack inside the Windows Azure datacenter because virtual machines are inherently untrusted by the Root OS Hypervisor. Microsoft has done a great deal of analysis to determine susceptibility to side-channel attacks. Timing attacks are the most difficult to mitigate. With timing attacks, an application carefully measures how long it takes some operations to complete and infers what is happening on another processor. By detecting cache misses, an attacker can figure out which cache lines are being accessed in code. With certain crypto implementations involving lookups from large tables, knowing the pattern of memory accesses - even at the granularity of cache lines - can reveal the key being used for encryption. While seemingly far-fetched, such attacks have been demonstrated under controlled conditions.

There are a number of reasons why side-channel attacks are unlikely to succeed in Windows Azure:

       An attack works best in the context of hyper-threading, where the two threads share all of their caches. Many current CPUs implement fully independent cores, each with a substantial private cache. The CPU chips that Windows Azure runs on today have four cores per chip and share caches only in the third tier.

       Windows Azure runs on nodes containing pairs of quad-core CPUs, so there are three other CPUs sharing the cache, and seven CPUs sharing the memory bus. This level of sharing leads to a great deal of noise in any signal from one CPU to another because actions of multiple CPUs tend to obfuscate the signal.

       Windows Azure generally dedicates CPUs to particular VMs. Any system that takes advantage of the fact that few servers keep their CPUs busy all the time, and implements more logical CPUs than physical CPUs, might open the possibility of context switches exposing cache access patterns. Windows Azure operates differently. VMs can migrate from one CPU to another, but are unlikely to do so frequently enough to offer an attacker any information.

External Verification

Microsoft contracted two top-tier penetration testing firms to conduct security assessments on different elements of the Windows Azure architecture before the Professional Developers Conferences (PDC) in 2008 and 2009. Each firm spent a significant amount of time examining hardened virtualization boundaries and probing for side-channel or I/O thrashing attacks. Neither firm was able to mount a successful attack against this design. That is not to say that such attacks are impossible to execute successfully, but six professional



penetration testers working over the course of seven weeks were unable to do so. These tests supplemented required internal security testing.

Runtime Security: Role Separation and Process privileges in Full Trust vs. Windows Azure Partial Trust

Windows Azure has a custom, restricted-privilege trust model available to all roles called “Windows Azure Partial Trust.” Based on customer demand, Windows Azure also supports Full Trust with Native Code Execution.

Full Trust with Native Code Execution facilitates the following scenarios:

      Use of FastCGI or PHP.

        Migration of traditional web services to the cloud.

        Role invocation and spawning Windows sub-processes (native code or managed).

        Calls into native libraries via P/Invoke (Platform Invocation Services).

A role that does not require the above functionality should have Windows Azure Partial Trust enabled. This option not only minimizes the attack footprint of the role in question, but it also helps reduce damage caused by a compromised role (see the Windows Azure Partial Trust comparison to Full Trust later in this document).

Regardless of the trust model selected, customer roles are hosted in non-Admin svchost processes. These svchost processes run under virtual service account SIDs, and not as local system or network service or administrator. This limitation provides two levels of defense-in-depth protection:

       A compromised service cannot manipulate other instances of that service if those instances reside on other VMs, and that helps limit an intrusion to a machine targeted for attack.

       A compromised service cannot easily attack the VM guest operating system in order to compromise the physical host OS. A compromised web role running in Windows Azure Partial Trust cannot P/Invoke native code binaries which could then be used to expose sensitive information about the service from the virtual machine (such as storage key data or application-specific intellectual property that could be present in memory). Direct attacks on the root host through the root/guest Hypervisor boundary in an attempt to gain control of the system are also mitigated.

Putting it all together: Creating more secure Windows Azure applications

By understanding the Windows Azure runtime trust models and the security protections and responsibilities of each cloud layer, developers can build hardened applications using the design best practices outlined below.

Isolate web roles and separate duties of individual roles in order to maximize the use of Windows Azure Partial Trust.

The Trust Levels Appendix C illustrates a subset of Partial Trust Policy Restrictions. The complete listing of restrictions is available in “Windows Azure Partial Trust Policy Reference.” The impact of these security restrictions illustrates the value of using Windows Azure Partial Trust to help secure Windows Azure services, especially externally-facing web roles. Most access to the local environment variables, file system and registry is restricted. Socket and Web connection permissions are also locked down.


Use the “Gatekeeper” design pattern to separate role duties and isolate privileged access

A Gatekeeper is a design pattern in which access to storage is brokered so as to minimize the attack surface of privileged roles by limiting their interaction to communication over private internal channels and only to other web/worker roles. These roles are deployed on separate VMs. In the event of a successful attack on a web role, privileged key material is not compromised. The pattern can best be illustrated by the following example which uses two roles:

       The GateKeeper – this is a web role that services requests from the Internet. Since these requests are potentially malicious, the Gatekeeper is not trusted with any duties other than validating the input it

receives. The GateKeeper is implemented in managed code and runs with Windows Azure Partial Trust. The service configuration settings for this role do not contain any Shared Key information for use with Windows Azure Storage.

       The KeyMaster – this is a privileged backend worker role that only takes inputs from the Gatekeeper and does so over a secured channel (an internal endpoint, or queue storage – either of which can be

secured with HTTPS). The KeyMaster handles storage requests fed to it by the GateKeeper, and assumes that the requests have been sanitized to some degree. The KeyMaster, as the name implies, is configured with Windows Azure Storage account information from the service configuration to enableretrieval of data from Blob or Table storage. Data can then be relayed back to the requesting client. Nothing about this design requires Full Trust or Native Code, but it offers the flexibility of running the KeyMaster in a higher privilege level if necessary.














Figure 1: The Gatekeeper Design Pattern

This solution is not ideal, since the KeyMaster is relying on GateKeeper to tell it what content to serve out. However, it does provide for separation of duty and it can poses additional challenges for an attacker. The amount of trust the KeyMaster places in the GateKeeper can be custom-tailored, but it is advisable to minimize the types of access requests allowed from the GateKeeper -- allowing the KeyMaster to accept Storage Blob API read and list operations from GateKeeper, but not add or delete operations, for example.

This pattern can easily be adapted to work with more complex service architectures on Windows Azure. All that is needed is to put a partial trust “Gatekeeper” in front of more privileged (or native code) roles to do the parsing of potentially malicious data from the network. The concept is analogous to a firewall running as Network Service to interact with foreign TCP payloads before pushing them up the stack to more critical components.


Use multiple storage keys to restrict access to privileged information where the Gatekeeper pattern does not apply.

In scenarios where a partial-trust Gatekeeper cannot be placed in front of a full-trust role, a multi-key design pattern can be used to protect trusted storage data. An example case of this scenario might be when a PHP web role is acting as a front-end web role, and placing a partial trust Gatekeeper in front of it may degrade performance to an unacceptable level.

Up to five storage keys can be assigned to one Windows Azure subscription. This diversity can be used to minimize exposure of a particular key to theft by placing lower-trust keys on lower-trust roles and higher-trust keys on higher-trust roles.

”Untrusted web role A” in the figure below has access to only one storage account, and it is not trusted to do anything but parse incoming requests and log them to storage account ‘A’. “Trusted Role B” (in the background) has the account keys for both storage ‘A’ and ‘B’, but is not exposed to potentially-malicious, malformed inputs. “Trusted Role B” processes and filters requests from the untrusted role via storage ‘A,’ but expects a specific structure or format. ‘B’ never fully trusts ‘A,’ allowing for the “real” storage key of value (account ‘B’) to be protected even in the event of a fully compromised, externally-facing, untrusted role. As with the Gatekeeper pattern, the trusted role should not provide unfettered access to the trusted store on behalf of Web Role ‘A.’ Instead, only a subset of legitimate commands should be serviced (such as read, but not create/update/delete in certain cases).



Figure 2: The multi-key design pattern

The multi-key design pattern has some advantages over the Gatekeeper/KeyMaster pattern:

       Providing separation of duty for storage accounts. In the event of Web Role A’s compromise; only the untrusted storage account and associated key are lost.

       No internal service endpoints need to be specified. Multiple storage accounts are used instead.

       Windows Azure Partial Trust is not required for the externally-facing untrusted web role. Since PHP does not support partial trust, the Gatekeeper configuration is not an option for PHP hosting.

Applying SDL Practices to Windows Azure Applications

This next section describes the security practices that should be considered when designing and building Windows Azure applications.

The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) applies equally to applications built on the Windows Azure platform and any other platform. Most Windows Azure applications have been built, or will be built using agile methods. As a result, the SDL for agile process may be more applicable to applications hosted on Windows Azure than to the classic phase-based SDL.

The Microsoft SDL Web site covers SDL for Agile in detail.

Microsoft requires that the SDL be followed for any Microsoft-developed software deployed on Windows Azure. The SDL addresses security threats throughout the development process by means that include threat modeling during the design process; following development best practices and code security standards during coding; and requiring various tools for testing and verification before deployment. These proactive checks during development make software less vulnerable to potential threats after release, and the SDL provides a structured and consistent methodology with which to apply them. These methodologies, which are supported by an executive commitment to security, have helped Microsoft develop more secure software. Anyone who develops software in Windows Azure can use these same methods to improve security.

Security Education and Awareness

If a development team does not understand the basics of secure design and development, or the risks of running web-based software and services, then security training is imperative, and it should be completed before any Windows Azure application is designed, built, tested or deployed. All members of software development teams should be informed about security basics and recent trends in security and privacy, and they should attend at least one relevant security training class every year - at a minimum. Development team members should be encouraged to seek opportunities for additional security and privacy education. Developers who are well-versed and up-to-date on security issues are better able to design and develop software with security in mind first and foremost -- and not as an afterthought or “bolt-on” feature added at the end of the development process.

Given that Windows Azure applications are usually web-based managed code (ASP.NET) applications, appropriate topics for security education include:

Secure design, including the following topics:


              Attack surface reduction

               Defense in depth

               Principle of least privilege

               Threat modeling
Secure coding, including the following topics:
               Cross-site scripting

               SQL injection

               Managed code security (transparency, code access security, assembly strong naming, etc.)


The SDL Process Guidance documentation provides links to books and training materials that are useful for beginning an SDL training program.

Secure Development Practices on the Windows Azure platform

The SDL provides guidance for use of development tools and practices that are applicable on the Azure platform. For the current version of compilers, linkers and other tools mandated by the SDL, see the SDL Process Appendix E.

·       Use the SDL-required (or later) compiler versions to compile for the Win64 target platform:

·       C/C++ code: Visual C++ 2008 SP1

·       C# or Visual Basic .NET code: Visual C# 2005 and Visual Basic .NET 2005

·       Compile and link native C/C++ code with /GS, /SAFESEH, /DYNAMICBASE and /NXCOMPAT. These options are enabled by default in Visual C++ 2008 SP1 and later. You can verify these settings using the BinScope binary analyzer.

·       Native C and C++ code must not use banned versions of buffer handling functions. For more information, see Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Banned Function Calls.

·       Use the currently required (or later) versions of code analysis tools for native C and C++ (the /analyze compiler option).

·       Run the FxCop code analysis tool against all managed code and fix all violations of the “Security” rules for the version of FxCop used.

·       Follow data input validation and output encoding requirements to address potential cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.

·       If using Microsoft SQL Azure database storage, only use parameterized queries or LINQ when accessing SQL-based data stores. Never dynamically construct a SQL statement from strings.

·       Use an approved XML parser, such as .NET’s System.Xml classes or, for native C++ code, use MSXML6 or XmlLite.

·       Make sure your application is compliant with SDL cryptographic retirements laid out in “Appendix D: Using SDL-approved cryptography in Windows Azure” on page 26.


Verification and Release

Testing tools covered under SDL Process Guidance should be selected according to the specific technologies a Windows Azure application uses. Many of the tools used for COM/DCOM, RPC, or ActiveX testing, as well as for File Fuzzing, can be used on Windows Azure applications.

Conclusion

Computing solutions that use Windows Azure are very compelling to companies wishing to trim capital expenditure. However, security remains an important consideration. Software architects and developers must understand the threats to software developed for “the cloud” and use appropriate secure design and implementation practices to counter threats in the cloud environment. The progression from classic, client-server computing, to web-enabled applications, to applications hosted in the cloud, has changed the boundaries of applications, and these boundary shifts make understanding the threats to Windows Azure-based software all the more important. The work required to develop secure Windows Azure applications isn’t new, revolutionary, or technically challenging; it simply requires that designers and developers consider the potential threats to their applications and apply the practices described in this paper.


Additional Resources

Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Portal


Windows Azure Portal


Windows Azure Developer Portal


Identity Developer Training Course


Windows Identity Foundation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/aa570351.aspx

Active Directory Federation Services

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/ad-fs.aspx


Securing Microsoft's Cloud Infrastructure


About Cross-Frame Scripting and Security

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533028(VS.85).aspx




Appendix A. Glossary

Developer Portal
The Windows Azure Developer Portal is an administrative portal for managing,

deploying and monitoring Windows Azure services.  The Developer Portal can be



Fabric
The logical clusters of machines which provide a role execution environment inside a

virtual machine.


Partial Trust
Partial trust is a concept in .NET that allows executable code to run with reduced

capabilities such as the ability to print, make a socket connection or open files.


REST
REpresentational State Transfer; a software design that uses a stateless client-server

architecture in which the web services are viewed as resources and can be identified by

their URLs.
SAML
Security Assertion Markup Language. An XML-based industry standard for exchanging

authentication and authorization information.


SDL
The Microsoft SDL is a security assurance process that is focused on software

development. It is a collection of mandatory security activities, grouped by the phases

of a software development life cycle (SDLC).  You can learn more about the Microsoft

SDL at http://www.microsoft.com/security/sdl/default.aspx


Svchost
Svchost is a process for hosting Windows services. The services are implemented as

DLLs.


VM
A software emulation of a computer that runs in an isolated partition of a real

computer.


VMBus
The subsystem that transfers data between the root operating system and guest virtual

machines


Web Role
A web role is a role that is customized for web application programming as supported

by IIS 7 and ASP.NET.


Worker Role
A worker role is a role that is useful for generalized development and may perform

background processing for a web role




Appendix B. Windows Azure Deployment Security

Threat Matrix

This appendix focuses on security issues specific to customer-deployed services that run on Windows Azure, to help highlight areas of increased risk and complexity compared to Software as a Service (SaaS) deployments using traditional web services. The goal of this appendix is to help Windows Azure developers and customers understand which security threats are mitigated by the Windows Azure environment and which security threats must be mitigated by the developer.

This appendix does not enumerate every conceivable threat to an application running on the Windows Azure infrastructure, nor does it address regulatory compliance issues.

Legend:




Mitigation is transparent to the customer, no action required.



Mitigation is provided by underlying platform/infrastructure and must be utilized by the customer's web application/service; Requires calls to existing/provided APIs.

Mitigation is per-service and is not provided at a lower level;

Must be mitigated by the customer’s code.

Mitigation is not yet implemented (planned for a future version of

Windows Azure) but will be transparent to the customer once complete.

Mitigation is not yet implemented (planned for a future version of

Windows Azure) and will require customer code to use Windows Azure

APIs once complete.









Is this




issue

Layer where
Nature of mitigation

higher risk

provided
Application/Service-layer or more
Threat
mitigation is
(if specific to
mitigation required
complex in

implemented

Windows Azure)

cloud







deploymen




ts?





Spoofing















ARP Flooding
Platform
VM Switch
None Required
No







Top-of-rack switches


IP address spoofing
Infrastructure &restrict which IP and
None Required
No
Platform
MAC addresses VMs





use







DNS spoofing
Infrastructure
Microsoft Live DNS
None Required
No
Services









Tampering







Trusted Channel


Packet tampering/

between Hypervisor


interception on VM
Platform
and VM tenants, VM
None Required
Yes
Bus

switch has additional




packet filters imposed









Binaries are Microsoft-
Verify the signature of

Windows Azure OS
Platform
signed and managed
Windows Azure SDK binaries
Yes
binary tampering
assemblies are strong
referenced in the application


named
code.






Local Filesystem/

Web Roles run as non-


Registry Tampering by
Platform
admin; strong ACLs on
None Required
Yes
compromised web

file system/registry


services

enforced by runtime







Tampering/disclosure


Use Windows Identity

of credentials or other
Web Role

Foundation and HTTPS
No
sensitive application

mutual authentication for SSL
data


connections






Tampering with




customer

VLANs, IP ACLs, Mutual


configuration data,
Infrastructure &
SSL authentication in


encryption keys and
use between fabric
None Required
No
Platform
intellectual property
controller and root/





during web role

guest nodes.


provisioning














Repudiation












Use monitoring and

Audit log collection,
Platform and Web
Windows Azure
diagnostic APIs as needed;

Monitoring and
transfer logs to Storage
Yes
storage and analysis
Role
Diagnostics APIs
private blob/table storage







over HTTPS











Information




Disclosure




Footprinting or

VLANs, HW & SW


enumeration of
Platform
firewalls, VM switch
None Required
Yes
services & applications
filters, IP filtering in VM
in the VM

Guest









Side-channel attacks

1 VM per core, no


against VM Guests on
Platform
communications
None Required
Yes
the same physical

between different


host

tenants







Disclosure of data in
Platform and Web

Use HTTPS in place of HTTP

transit between client

where  sensitive data is
Yes
Role

and server


transferred





Disclosure of SSL
Platform and Web
Secure provisioning via Use the certificate store for
Yes
Certificates/keys used
Role
Windows Azure
client and server SSL
by Web Roles

Certificate Store
certificate storage






Disclosure of arbitrary


Pre-encrypt secret data prior



to uploading. Do not store

secrets in blob/table/
Web Role/Client

Yes

decryption keys in Windows
queue storage





Azure Storage












Use HTTPS to securely

Disclosure of Shared

transfer Shared Access

Web Role/Client
Signatures to intended
Yes
Access Signatures

recipients and set appropriate






permissions on containers.






Physical theft of




storage account

Physical Security and


information, code or
Infrastructure
None Required
No
Operations Policies
other intellectual







property









Encrypted Storage of




Arbitrary Secrets in
Platform

Will require API calls similar
Yes
Windows Azure

to DPAPI



Storage














Denial of Service









Denial of Service

Load balancing &


attacks via network



Platform
throttling in network
None Required
No
bandwidth saturation
(packet flooding)

infrastructure








Identification of

Windows Azure Live


botnets and malicious
Infrastructure
Services monitors and
None Required
Yes
network traffic

investigates







Deep packet




inspection for network
Platform

None Required
Yes
attacks with known





signatures









Flooding of Web Role

Quotas, ACLs, Reduced



privilege execution and


local storage or blob/
Platform
None Required
Yes
table storage

flood monitoring



protection











Request flooding at


Implement application-level

the customer code/


No
Web Role

request throttling if necessary
app level








Elevation of




Privilege




Anti-virus scanning of
Platform

None Required
Yes
VM Guests/Hosts












Must scope all cookies and

Misconfiguration of


the document.domain



property to the service

Service/Application
Web Role

Yes

subdomain (eg. http://
settings





contoso.cloudapp.net) and








NOT to *.cloudapp.net






Cross-site Request




Forgery Attacks
Web Role

Use ASP.NET defenses
No
against the web role









Cross-site Scripting




Attacks against the
Web Role

Use the Anti-XSS Library
No
web role









API fuzzing attacks on


Fuzz all interfaces and



endpoints unique to code

interfaces exposed by
Web Role

No

exposed to the web (or any
the web role





other  services)












Network packet

IPFilter driver



customizations fuzzed


fuzzing attacks against



Platform
to SDL requirements,
None Required
No
network protocols

external penetration


used by web role




testing performed











File Fuzzing attacks

Existing parsers fuzzed


against file parsers
Platform
to SDL requirements,
None Required
No
which are part of
external penetration



Windows Server 2008

testing performed







File Fuzzing attacks


Fuzz test all proprietary

against custom,



Web Role

network protocol or file
No
application-provided



format parsers

file parsers












Patching of security


Have a security response and

vulnerabilities at the



Web Role

updating plan in place
No
Web Role/customer





code level









API Fuzzing attacks

APIs fuzzed to SDL



requirements, external


against the Hypervisor
Platform
None Required
Yes
root

penetration testing



performed











Appendix C: Excerpt from the Windows Azure Partial Trust Policy Reference

This is an abbreviated version of the full Windows Azure Partial Trust Policy available at the MSDN Portal. By default, roles deployed to Windows Azure run under full trust. To run your role under partial trust, you must add the enableNativeCodeExecution attribute on the WebRole or WorkerRole element and set it to false.

Legend:
WA Partial Trust is more restrictive here than ASP.Net Medium Trust

WA Partial Trust behavior differs from ASP.Net Medium Trust without being more restrictive

WA Partial Trust behavior is the same as ASP.Net Medium Trust





Windows Azure
Permission
State
ASP.NET medium trust
partial trust
AspNetHosting
Level
Medium
Medium




EnvironmentPermission
Unrestricted
TEMP; TMP; USERNAME;
TEMP;TMP


OS; COMPUTERNAME






Read
TEMP; TMP; USERNAME;
TEMP;TMP


OS; COMPUTERNAME






Write
TEMP; TMP; USERNAME;
TEMP;TMP


OS; COMPUTERNAME





FileIOPermission
Unrestricted
Denied
Denied





Read
$AppDir$
$AppDir$; Any



named local store





Write
$AppDir$
Any named local



store





Append
$AppDir$
Any named local



store





PathDiscovery
$AppDir$
$AppDir$; Any



named local store




IsolatedStorageFilePermission
Unrestricted
Denied
Denied





AssemblyIsolationByUser
Permitted
Denied





UnrestrictedUserQuota
Permitted
Denied




RegistryPermission
Unrestricted
Denied
Denied




SecurityPermission
Assertion
Permitted
Denied





RemotingConfiguration
Permitted
Denied




SocketPermission
Connect
Denied
External sites



only



TCP





Accept
Denied
Denied




SqlClientPermission
Unrestricted
Permitted
External sites



only




WebPermission
Unrestricted
Denied
Denied





Connect
$OriginHost$
External sites



only





Accept
Denied
Denied






Appendix D: Using SDL-approved cryptography in Windows Azure Applications

Many applications require the use of cryptographic technologies for encryption, tampering detection, signatures etc., and the SDL is prescriptive about which cryptographic technologies should be used. The following is a list of some of the more common requirements you will encounter when building a Windows Azure application.

       Where possible, use SSL/TLS (by using HTTPS) to transfer data between all parties, such as: Clients <-> Web and Worker Roles

Clients <->  Storage endpoints

Web Roles <-> Web and Worker Roles over internal endpoints Web and Worker Roles <-> Storage endpoints
       Web roles supporting HTTPS should be provisioned with certificates supporting 2048-bit RSA keys.

       Certificates should be renewed annually by refreshing the service configuration with the thumbprint of any new certificate uploaded via the developer portal.

       Use AES for symmetric cryptographic operations.

       Use 256-bit symmetric keys. This is especially important when a role needs to store encrypted data in Windows Azure Storage.

       Use RSA or Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for asymmetric cryptographic operations.

        Use RSA keys that are 2048-bit or longer.

       Use a SHA-2 algorithm (SHA-256, SHA-384 or SHA-512) for hashing and message-authentication codes.

       Use the strong entropy provisioned into the VM if keys are derived in role code. Windows Azure virtual machines are specially provisioned with strong entropy at boot.

      For more guidance on use of cryptography, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/sdl-process-guidance.aspx


       Store SSL/TLS certificates with Windows Azure Certificate Services, not in Windows Azure Storage or on local disk.

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