A core library for policies

Use Cedar policies to define and enforce access control policies in your application.

Policy examples

Allow a user to create a host if the host's name matches a specific pattern, the host's IP is within a certain range, and the host has a specific label:

permit (
   principal == User::"alice",
   action == Action::"create_host",
   resource is Host
) when {
    resource.nameLabels.contains("in_domain") &&
    resource.ip.isInRange(ip("10.0.0.0/24")) &&
    resource.name like "*n*"
};

A different users have different permissions when it comes to creating hosts. Alice can create hosts within the domain example_domain, irrespective of the IP range, and with any name. Bob on the other hand can only create hosts with a acceptable names for web servers and within a specific IP range, and within the same domain.

permit (
    principal == User::"alice",
    action == Action::"create_host",
    resource is Host
) when {
    resource.nameLabels.contains("example_domain")
};

permit (
    principal == User::"bob",
    action == Action::"create_host",
    resource is Host
) when {
    resource.ip.isInRange(ip("10.0.1.0/24")) &&
    resource.nameLabels.contains("valid_web_name") &&
    resource.nameLabels.contains("example_domain")
};

Alice can perform an action called assign_to_restricted_ips, no matter the resource. Bob can only perform the action assign_to_gateways for hosts within the RFC 1918 range for 10.0.0.0/8. The implementation of these action is up to the client application, but we can imagine that restricted IPs consist of IPs that are critical for infastructure, like gateways, broadcast adresses, and possibly some reserved IPs.

permit (
   principal == User::"alice",
   action == Action::"assign_to_restricted_ips",
   resource
);

permit (
   principal == User::"bob",
   action == Action::"assign_to_gateways",
   resource is Host
) when {
    resource.ip.isInRange(ip("10.0.0.0/8"))
};

Code example

use treetop_core::{PolicyEngine, Request, Decision, User, Principal, Action, initialize_host_patterns};
use regex::Regex;

let policies = r#"
permit (
   principal == User::"alice",
   action == Action::"create_host",
   resource is Host
) when {
    resource.nameLabels.contains("in_domain") &&
    resource.ip.isInRange(ip("10.0.0.0/24")) &&
    resource.name like "*n*"
};
"#;

initialize_host_patterns(vec![
   ("in_domain".to_string(), Regex::new(r"example\.com$").unwrap()),
   ("webserver".to_string(), Regex::new(r"^web-\d+").unwrap())
]);

let engine = PolicyEngine::new_from_str(&policies).unwrap();

let request = Request {
   principal: Principal::User(User::new("alice", None, None)), // User without groups, no namespace
   action: Action::new("create_host", None), // Action is not in a namespace
   resource: Resource::Host {
      name: "hostname.example.com".into(),
      ip: "10.0.0.1".parse().unwrap(),
   },
};

let decision = engine.evaluate(&request).unwrap();
assert_eq!(decision, Decision::Allow);

// List all of alice's policies
let policies = engine.list_policies_for_user("alice", vec![]).unwrap();
// This value is also seralizable to JSON
let json = serde_json::to_string(&policies).unwrap();

Groups

Groups are listed as the principal entity type Group, and to permit access to member of a group, you can use the in operator. If you say principal in Group::"admins", it will match any principal that is a member of the group admins, but if you say principal == Group::"admins", it will only match the group itself, not its members. You will almost always want to use the in operator when dealing with groups...

permit (
   principal in Group::"admins",
   action == Action::"manage_hosts",
   resource is Host
)

This is then queried as follows in a request:

let request = Request {
   principal: Principal::User(User::new("alice", None, None)),
   action: Action::new("manage_hosts", None),
   resource: Resource::Host {
      name: "hostname.example.com".into(),
      ip: "10.0.0.1".parse().unwrap(),
   },
};

Note that namespaces for groups are inherited from vector of namespaces passed during creation of the User struct. This implies that you cannot use different namespaces for groups and users in the same query.

Passing generic resources

It is impractical to hard code all relevant resource types into the policy engine. Instead, there is the option to pass a Generic resource into the engine, which takes two parameters, a kind and an id. This allows for more flexibility in defining resources without needing to explicitly enumerate all possible types.

Imagine the following policy:

permit (
   principal == User::"alice",
   action == Action::"build_house",
   resource is House
) when {
    resource.id == "house-1"
};

This can be queried with the following request:

Request {
   principal: Principal::User(User::new("alice", None, None)),
   action: Action::new("build_house", None),
   resource: Resource::Generic {
      kind: "House".into(),
      id: "house-1".into(),
   },
};

This allows for a querying resources that are not explicitly defined in the policy engine, but instead defined in the policy file. Both id and kind are passed as context, as strings, into the query. kind will always match the resource name.