Tendermint KMS 🔐

Key Management System for Tendermint applications, initially targeting Cosmos Validators.

About

This repository contains tmkms, a key management service intended to be deployed in conjunction with Tendermint applications (ideally on separate physical hosts) which provides the following:

• High-availability access to validator signing keys
• Double-signing prevention even in the event the validator process is compromised
• Hardware security module storage for validator keys which can survive host compromise

Status

Tendermint KMS is currently ALPHA SOFTWARE AND UNAUDITED -- USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

It supports YubiHSM 2 and Ledger as hardware-backed key storage methods.

Security Issues

The following high severity security issues are still unresolved:

• #111: Access control
• #142: MITM in secret connection

Work is underway to address them both.

For now we recommend the connection between the KMS and validators occur over an isolated network and not depend solely on the Secret Connection protocol for authentication and confidentiality (which is also a good idea in general for defense-in-depth purposes).

Double Signing / High Availability

Tendermint KMS implements alpha quality double signing detection. Please see #60: Double-signing prevention (MVP for launch) for more information, however note this implementation is limited.

In particular, KMS does NOT prevent double signing if two instances are running as identical copies, an attacker compromises both (as a signing oracle), and uses both instances to double sign.

The longer-term story around double-signing is more complex, as it includes such scenarios as signing while unbonded. For more information on future-plans to provide double-signing defense and high availability in such scenarions, see #115: Dobule signing prevention (post-launch).

Supported Platforms

tmkms should build on any supported Rust platform which is also supported by libusb. Below are some of the available tier 1, 2, and 3 Rust platforms which are also supported by libusb.

NOTE: tmkms is presently tested on Linux/x86_64. We don't otherwise guarantee support for any of the platforms below, but they theoretically meet the necessary prerequisites for support.

Operating Systems

• Linux (recommended)
• FreeBSD
• NetBSD
• OpenBSD
• macOS

CPU Architectures

• x86_64 (recommended)
• arm (32-bit ARM)
• aarch64 (64-bit ARM)
• mips (32-bit MIPS)
• mips64 (64-bit MIPS)
• powerpc (32-bit PowerPC)
• powerpc64 (64-bit PowerPC)
• sparc64 (64-bit SPARC)

Installation

You will need the following prerequisites:

• Rust (stable; 1.31+): https://rustup.rs/
• C compiler: e.g. gcc, clang
• pkg-config
• libusb (1.0+). Install instructions for common platforms:
  • Debian/Ubuntu: apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev
  • RedHat/CentOS: yum install libusb1-devel
  • macOS (Homebrew): brew install libusb

NOTE (x86_64 only): Configure RUSTFLAGS environment variable: export RUSTFLAGS=-Ctarget-feature=+aes,+ssse3

There are two ways to install tmkms: either compiling the source code after cloning it from git, or using Rust's cargo install command.

Compiling from source code (via git)

tmkms can be compiled directly from the git repository source code using the following method.

The following example adds --features=yubihsm to enable YubiHSM 2 support.

$ git clone https://github.com/tendermint/kms.git && cd kms
[...]
$ cargo build --release --features=yubihsm

Alternatively, substitute --features=ledgertm to enable Ledger support.

If successful, this will produce a tmkms executable located at ./target/release/tmkms

Installing with the cargo install command

With Rust (1.31+) installed, you can install tmkms with the following:

cargo install tmkms --features=yubihsm

Or to install a specific version (recommended):

cargo install tmkms --features=yubihsm --version=0.4.0

Alternatively, substitute --features=ledgertm to enable Ledger support.

YubiHSM 2 Setup Instructions

Please see README.yubihsm.md

Usage

After compiling, start tmkms with the following:

$ tmkms start

This will read the configuration from the tmkms.toml file in the current working directory.

To explicitly specify the path to the configuration, use the -c flag:

$ tmkms start -c /path/to/tmkms.toml

Development

The following are instructions for setting up a development environment. They assume you've already followed steps 1 & 2 from the Installation section above.

• Install rustfmt: rustup component add rustfmt
• Install clippy: rustup component add clippy

Alternatively, you can build a Docker image from the Dockerfile in the top level of the repository, which is what is used to run tests in CI.

Before opening a pull request, please run the checks below:

Testing

Run the test suite with:

cargo test --all-features

Format checking (rustfmt)

Make sure your code is well-formatted by running:

cargo fmt

Lint (clippy)

Lint your code (i.e. check it for common issues) with:

cargo clippy

License

Copyright © 2018-2019 Tendermint

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.