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Run the PagerDuty Access Request Plugin

With Teleport's PagerDuty integration, engineers can access the infrastructure they need to resolve incidents quickly—without longstanding admin permissions that can become a vector for attacks.

Teleport's PagerDuty integration allows you to treat Teleport Role Access Requests as PagerDuty incidents, notify the appropriate on-call team, and approve or deny the requests via Teleport. You can also configure the plugin to approve Role Access Requests automatically if the user making the request is on the on-call team for a service affected by an incident.

This integration is hosted on Teleport Cloud

In Teleport Enterprise Cloud, Teleport manages the PagerDuty integration for you, and you can enroll the PagerDuty integration from the Teleport Web UI.

Visit the Teleport Web UI and click Access Management on the menu bar at the top of the screen.

On the left sidebar, click Enroll New Integration to visit the "Enroll New Integration" page:

Enroll an Access Request plugin

On the "Select Integration Type" menu, click the tile for your integration. You will see a page with instructions to set up the integration, as well as a form that you can use to configure the integration.

This guide will explain how to set up Teleport's Access Request plugin for PagerDuty.

PagerDuty plugin architecture

Prerequisites​

Recommended: Configure Machine ID to provide short-lived Teleport credentials to the plugin. Before following this guide, follow a Machine ID deployment guide to run the tbot binary on your infrastructure.

  • A PagerDuty account with the "Admin", "Global Admin", or "Account Owner" roles. These roles are necessary for generating an API token that can list and look up user profiles.

    You can see your role by visiting your user page in PagerDuty, navigating to the "Permissions & Teams" tab, and checking the value of the "Base Role" field.

  • Either a Linux host or Kubernetes cluster where you will run the PagerDuty plugin.

  • 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. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines.

    For example:

    $ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
    $ tctl status
    # Cluster  teleport.example.com
    # Version  15.4.22
    # 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.

Step 1/8. Create services​

To demonstrate the PagerDuty plugin, create two services in PagerDuty. For each service, fill in only the "Name" field and skip all other configuration screens, leaving options as the defaults:

  • Teleport Access Request Notifications
  • My Critical Service

We will configure the PagerDuty plugin to create an incident in the Teleport Access Request Notifications service when certain users create an Access Request.

For users on the on-call team for My Critical Service (in this case, your PagerDuty user), we will configure the PagerDuty plugin to approve Access Requests automatically, letting them investigate incidents on the service quickly.

Step 2/8. Define RBAC resources​

The Teleport PagerDuty plugin works by receiving Access Request events from the Teleport Auth Service and, based on these events, interacting with the PagerDuty API.

In this section, we will show you how to configure the PagerDuty plugin by defining the following RBAC resources:

  • A role called editor-requester, which can request the built-in editor role. We will configure this role to open a PagerDuty incident whenever a user requests it, notifying the on-call team for the Teleport Access Request Notifications service.
  • A role called demo-role-requester, which can request a role called demo-role. We will configure the PagerDuty plugin to auto-approve this request whenever the user making it is on the on-call team for My Critical Service.
  • A user and role called access-plugin that the PagerDuty plugin will assume in order to authenticate to the Teleport Auth Service. This role will have permissions to approve Access Requests from users on the on-call team for My Critical Service automatically.
  • A role called access-plugin-impersonator that allows you to generate signed credentials that the PagerDuty plugin can use to authenticate with your Teleport cluster.

editor-requester​

Create a file called editor-request-rbac.yaml with the following content, which defines a role called editor-reviewer that can review requests for the editor role, plus an editor-requester role that can request this role.

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: editor-reviewer
spec:
  allow:
    review_requests:
      roles: ['editor']
---
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: editor-requester
spec:
  allow:
    request:
      roles: ['editor']
      thresholds:
        - approve: 1
          deny: 1
      annotations:
        pagerduty_notify_service: ["Teleport Access Request Notifications"]

The Teleport Auth Service annotates Access Request events with metadata based on the roles of the Teleport user submitting the Access Request. The PagerDuty plugin reads these annotations to determine how to respond to a new Access Request event.

Whenever a user with the editor-requester role requests the editor role, the PagerDuty plugin will read the pagerduty_notify_service annotation and notify PagerDuty to open an incident in the specified service, Teleport Access Request Notifications, until someone with the editor-reviewer role approves or denies the request.

Create the roles you defined:

$ tctl create -f editor-request-rbac.yaml
role 'editor-reviewer' has been created
role 'editor-requester' has been created

demo-role-requester​

Create a file called demo-role-requester.yaml with the following content:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: demo-role
---
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: demo-role-requester
spec:
  allow:
    request:
      roles: ['demo-role']
      thresholds:
        - approve: 1
          deny: 1
      annotations:
        pagerduty_services: ["My Critical Service"]

Users with the demo-role-requester role can request the demo-role role. When such a user makes this request, the PagerDuty plugin will read the pagerduty_services annotation. If the user making the request is on the on-call team for a service listed as a value for the annotation, the plugin will approve the Access Request automatically.

In this case, the PagerDuty plugin will approve any requests from users on the on-call team for My Critical Service.

Create the resources:

$ tctl create -f demo-role-requester.yaml;
warning

For auto-approval to work, the user creating an Access Request must have a Teleport username that is also the email address associated with a PagerDuty account. In this guide, we will add the demo-role-requester role to your own Teleport account—which we assume is also your email address for PagerDuty—so you can request the demo-role role.

access-plugin​

Teleport's Access Request plugins authenticate to your Teleport cluster as a user with permissions to list, read, and update Access Requests. This way, plugins can retrieve Access Requests from the Teleport Auth Service, present them to reviewers, and modify them after a review.

Define a user and role called access-plugin by adding the following content to a file called access-plugin.yaml:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
      - resources: ['access_request']
        verbs: ['list', 'read']
      - resources: ['access_plugin_data']
        verbs: ['update']
    review_requests:
      roles: ['demo-role']
      where: 'contains(request.system_annotations["pagerduty_services"], "My Critical Service")'
---
kind: user
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  roles: ['access-plugin']
version: v2

Notice that the access-plugin role includes an allow.review_requests.roles field with demo-role as a value. This allows the plugin to review requests for the demo-role role.

We are also restricting the access-plugin role to reviewing only Access Requests associated with My Critical Service. To do so, we have defined a predicate expression in the review_requests.where field. This expression indicates that the plugin cannot review requests for demo-role unless the request contains an annotation with the key pagerduty_services and the value My Critical Service.

How "where" conditions work

The where field includes a predicate expression that determines whether a reviewer is allowed to review a specific request. You can include two functions in a predicate expression:

FunctionDescriptionExample
equalsA field is equivalent to a value.equals(request.reason, "resolve an incident")
containsA list of strings includes a value.contains(reviewer.traits["team"], "devops")

When you use the where field, you can include the following fields in your predicate expression:

FieldTypeDescription
reviewer.roles[]stringA list of the reviewer's Teleport role names
reviewer.traitsmap[string][]stringA map of the reviewer's Teleport traits by the name of the trait
request.roles[]stringA list of the Teleport roles a user is requesting
request.reasonstringThe reason attached to the request
request.system_annotationsmap[string][]stringA map of annotations for the request by annotation key, e.g., pagerduty_services

You can combine functions using the following operators:

OperatorFormatDescription
&&function && functionEvaluates to true if both functions evaluate to true
||function || functionEvaluates to true if either one or both functions evaluate to true
!!functionEvaluates to true if the function evaluates to false

An example of a function is equals(request.reason, "resolve an incident"). To configure an allow condition to match any Access Request that does not include the reason, "resolve an incident", you could use the function, !equals(request.reason, "resolve an incident").

Create the user and role:

$ tctl create -f access-plugin.yaml

access-plugin-impersonator​

As with all Teleport users, the Teleport Auth Service authenticates the access-plugin user by issuing short-lived TLS credentials. In this case, we will need to request the credentials manually by impersonating the access-plugin role and user.

If you are running a self-hosted Teleport Enterprise cluster and are using tctl from the Auth Service host, you will already have impersonation privileges.

To grant your user impersonation privileges for access-plugin, define a role called access-plugin-impersonator by pasting the following YAML document into a file called access-plugin-impersonator.yaml:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: access-plugin-impersonator
spec:
  allow:
    impersonate:
      roles:
      - access-plugin
      users:
      - access-plugin

Create the access-plugin-impersonator role:

$ tctl create -f access-plugin-impersonator.yaml

Add roles to your user​

Later in this guide, your Teleport user will take three actions that require additional permissions:

  • Generate signed credentials that the PagerDuty plugin will use to connect to your Teleport Cluster
  • Manually review an Access Request for the editor role
  • Create an Access Request for the demo-role role

To grant these permissions to your user, give your user the editor-reviewer, access-plugin-impersonator, and demo-role-requester roles we defined earlier.

Retrieve your user definition:

$ TELEPORT_USER=$(tsh status --format=json | jq -r .active.username)
$ tctl get users/${TELEPORT_USER?} > myuser.yaml

Edit myuser.yaml to include the roles you just created:

  roles:
   - access
   - auditor
   - editor
+  - editor-reviewer
+  - access-plugin-impersonator
+  - demo-role-requester

Apply your changes:

$ tctl create -f myuser.yaml

Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again. You will now be able to review requests for the editor role, request the demo-role role, and generate signed certificates for the access-plugin role and user.

Create a user who will request access​

Create a user called myuser who has the editor-requester role. Later in this guide, you will create an Access Request as this user to test the PagerDuty plugin:

$ tctl users add myuser --roles=editor-requester

tctl will print an invitation URL to your terminal. Visit the URL and log in as myuser for the first time, registering credentials as configured for your Teleport cluster.

Step 3/8. Install the Teleport PagerDuty plugin​

We currently only provide linux-amd64 binaries. You can also compile these plugins from source. You can run the plugin from a remote host or your local development machine.

$ curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-access-pagerduty-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf teleport-access-pagerduty-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ cd teleport-access-pagerduty
$ sudo ./install

Make sure the binary is installed:

$ teleport-pagerduty version
teleport-pagerduty v15.4.22 git:teleport-pagerduty-v15.4.22-fffffffff go1.21

Step 4/8. Export the access plugin identity​

Give the plugin access to a Teleport identity file. We recommend using Machine ID for this in order to produce short-lived identity files that are less dangerous if exfiltrated, though in demo deployments, you can generate longer-lived identity files with tctl:

Configure tbot with an output that will produce the credentials needed by the plugin. As the plugin will be accessing the Teleport API, the correct output type to use is identity.

For this guide, the directory destination will be used. This will write these credentials to a specified directory on disk. Ensure that this directory can be written to by the Linux user that tbot runs as, and that it can be read by the Linux user that the plugin will run as.

Modify your tbot configuration to add an identity output.

If running tbot on a Linux server, use the directory output to write identity files to the /opt/machine-id directory:

outputs:
- type: identity
  destination:
    type: directory
    # For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
    # You may wish to customize this. Multiple outputs cannot share the same
    # destination.
    path: /opt/machine-id

If running tbot on Kubernetes, write the identity file to Kubernetes secret instead:

outputs:
  - type: identity
    destination:
      type: kubernetes_secret
      name: teleport-plugin-pagerduty-identity

If operating tbot as a background service, restart it. If running tbot in one-shot mode, execute it now.

You should now see an identity file under /opt/machine-id or a Kubernetes secret named teleport-plugin-pagerduty-identity. This contains the private key and signed certificates needed by the plugin to authenticate with the Teleport Auth Service.

Step 5/8. Set up a PagerDuty API key​

Generate an API key that the PagerDuty plugin will use to create and modify incidents as well as list users, services, and on-call policies.

In your PagerDuty dashboard, go to Integrations → API Access Keys and click Create New API Key. Add a key description, e.g., "Teleport integration". Leave "Read-only API Key" unchecked. Copy the key to a file on your local machine. We'll use the key in the plugin config file later.

Create an API key

Step 6/8. Configure the PagerDuty plugin​

At this point, you have generated credentials that the PagerDuty plugin will use to connect to Teleport and the PagerDuty API. You will now configure the PagerDuty plugin to use these credentials, plus adjust any settings required for your environment.

Teleport's PagerDuty plugin has its own configuration file in TOML format. On the host where you will run the PagerDuty plugin, generate a boilerplate config by running the following commands:

$ teleport-pagerduty configure > teleport-pagerduty.toml
$ sudo mv teleport-pagerduty.toml /etc
Saving the configuration to another location

The PagerDuty plugin expects the configuration to be in /etc/teleport-pagerduty.toml, but you can override this with the --config flag when you run the plugin binary later in this guide.

Edit the configuration file in /etc/teleport-pagerduty.toml as explained below:

[teleport]​

The PagerDuty plugin uses this section to connect to your Teleport cluster:

addr: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Teleport Enterprise Cloud account (e.g., teleport.example.com:443 or mytenant.teleport.sh:443).

identity: Fill this in with the path to the identity file you exported earlier.

client_key, client_crt, root_cas: Comment these out, since we are not using them in this configuration.

If you are providing credentials to the plugin using a tbot binary that runs on a Linux server, make sure the value of identity is the same as the path of the identity file you configured tbot to generate, /opt/machine-id/identity.

Configure the plugin to periodically reload the identity file, ensuring that it does not attempt to connect to the Teleport Auth Service with expired credentials.

Add the following to the teleport section of the configuration:

refresh_identity = true

[pagerduty]​

Assign api_key to the PagerDuty API key you generated earlier.

Assign user_email to the email address of a PagerDuty user on the account associated with your API key. When the PagerDuty plugin creates a new incident, PagerDuty will display this incident as created by that user.

Overriding annotation names

This guide has assumed that the Teleport PagerDuty plugin uses pagerduty_notify_service annotation to determine which services to notify of new Access Request events and the pagerduty_services annotation to configure auto-approval.

If you would like to use a different name for these annotations in your Teleport roles, you can assign the pagerduty.notify_service and pagerduty.services fields.

The final configuration should resemble the following:

(!examples/resources/plugins/teleport-pagerduty-cloud.toml!)

Step 7/8. Test the PagerDuty plugin​

After you configure the PagerDuty plugin, run the following command to start it. The -d flag will provide debug information to ensure that the plugin can connect to PagerDuty and your Teleport cluster:

$ teleport-pagerduty start -d
# DEBU   DEBUG logging enabled logrus/exported.go:117
# INFO   Starting Teleport Access PagerDuty extension 0.1.0-dev.1: pagerduty/main.go:124
# DEBU   Checking Teleport server version pagerduty/main.go:226
# DEBU   Starting a request watcher... pagerduty/main.go:288
# DEBU   Starting PagerDuty API health check... pagerduty/main.go:170
# DEBU   Starting secure HTTPS server on :8081 utils/http.go:146
# DEBU   Watcher connected pagerduty/main.go:252
# DEBU   PagerDuty API health check finished ok pagerduty/main.go:176
# DEBU   Setting up the webhook extensions pagerduty/main.go:178

Create an Access Request​

As the Teleport user myuser, create an Access Request for the editor role:

A Teleport admin can create an Access Request for another user with tctl:

$ tctl request create myuser --roles=editor

You should see a log resembling the following on your PagerDuty plugin host:

INFO   Successfully created PagerDuty incident pd_incident_id:00000000000000
pd_service_name:Teleport Access Request Notifications
request_id:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 request_op:put
request_state:PENDING pagerduty/app.go:366

In PagerDuty, you will see a new incident containing information about the Access Request:

PagerDuty dashboard showing an Access Request

Resolve the request​

Once you receive an Access Request message, click the link to visit Teleport and approve or deny the request:

Reviewing a request

Reviewing from the command line

You can also review an Access Request from the command line:

# Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
$ tctl request approve REQUEST_ID
$ tctl request deny REQUEST_ID
Auditing Access Requests

When the PagerDuty plugin sends a notification, anyone who receives the notification can follow the enclosed link to an Access Request URL. While users must be authorized via their Teleport roles to review Access Request, you should still check the Teleport audit log to ensure that the right users are reviewing the right requests.

When auditing Access Request reviews, check for events with the type Access Request Reviewed in the Teleport Web UI.

Trigger an auto-approval​

As your Teleport user, create an Access Request for the demo-role role.

You will see a log similar to the following on your PagerDuty plugin host:

INFO   Successfully submitted a request approval
pd_user_email:myuser@example.com pd_user_name:My User
request_id:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 request_op:put
request_state:PENDING pagerduty/app.go:511

Your Access Request will appear as APPROVED:

$ tsh requests ls
ID                                   User               Roles     Created (UTC)       Status
------------------------------------ ------------------ --------- ------------------- --------
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 myuser@example.com demo-role 12 Aug 22 18:30 UTC APPROVED

Step 8/8. Set up systemd​

This section is only relevant if you are running the Teleport PagerDuty plugin on a Linux host.

In production, we recommend starting the Teleport plugin daemon via an init system like systemd. Here's the recommended Teleport plugin service unit file for systemd:

(!examples/systemd/plugins/teleport-pagerduty.service!)

Save this as teleport-pagerduty.service in either /usr/lib/systemd/system/ or another unit file load path supported by systemd.

Enable and start the plugin:

$ sudo systemctl enable teleport-pagerduty
$ sudo systemctl start teleport-pagerduty