Skip to main content

Run the Slack Access Request Plugin

This guide will explain how to set up Slack to receive Access Request messages from Teleport. Teleport's Slack integration notifies individuals and channels of Access Requests. Users are then directed to log in to the Teleport cluster where they can approve and deny Access Requests, making it easier to implement security best practices without compromising productivity.

This integration is hosted on Teleport Cloud

In Teleport Enterprise Cloud, Teleport manages the Slack integration for you, and you can enroll the Slack 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.

The Slack Access Request plugin

Here is an example of sending an Access Request via Teleport's Slack plugin:

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.

  • Slack admin privileges to create an app and install it to your workspace. Your Slack profile must have the "Workspace Owner" or "Workspace Admin" banner below your profile picture.
  • Either a Linux host or Kubernetes cluster where you will run the Slack 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. Define RBAC resources​

Before you set up the Slack plugin, you will need to enable Role Access Requests in your Teleport cluster.

For the purpose of this guide, we will define an editor-requester role, which can request the built-in editor role, and an editor-reviewer role that can review requests for the editor role.

Create a file called editor-request-rbac.yaml with the following content:

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

Create the roles you defined:

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

Allow yourself to review requests by users with the editor-requester role by assigning yourself the editor-reviewer role.

Assign the editor-reviewer role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    $ ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    $ tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \
      --set-roles "${ROLES?},editor-reviewer"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

Create a user called myuser who has the editor-requester role. This user cannot edit your cluster configuration unless they request the editor role:

$ 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.

Later in this guide, you will have myuser request the editor role so you can review the request using the Teleport plugin.

Step 2/8. Install the Teleport Slack 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-slack-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf teleport-access-slack-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ cd teleport-access-slack
$ sudo ./install

Make sure the binary is installed:

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

Step 3/8. Create a user and role for the plugin​

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

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']

      # In order to provide access list review reminders, permissions to list and read access lists
      # are necessary. This is currently only supported for a subset of plugins.
      - resources: ['access_list']
        verbs: ['list', 'read']

      # Optional: To display logins permitted by roles, the plugin also needs
      # permission to read the role resource.
      - resources: ['role']
        verbs: ['read']

    # Optional: To display user-friendly names in resource-based Access
    # Requests instead of resource IDs, the plugin also needs permission
    # to list the resources being requested. Include this along with the
    # list-access-request-resources role definition.
    review_requests:
      preview_as_roles:
        - list-access-request-resources
---
kind: user
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  roles: ['access-plugin']
version: v2
---
# Optional, for displaying friendly names of resources. Resource types and
# labels can be further limited to only the resources that access can be
# requested to.
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: list-access-request-resources
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
      - resources: ['node', 'app', 'db', 'kube_cluster']
        verbs: ['list', 'read']
    node_labels:
      '*': '*'
    kubernetes_labels:
      '*': '*'
    db_labels:
      '*': '*'
    app_labels:
      '*': '*'
    group_labels:
      '*': '*'

Create the user and role:

$ tctl create -f access-plugin.yaml

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 deployment 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

If you are providing identity files to the plugin with Machine ID, assign the access-plugin role to the Machine ID bot user. Otherwise, assign this role to the user you plan to use to generate credentials for the access-plugin role and user:

Assign the access-plugin-impersonator role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    $ ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    $ tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \
      --set-roles "${ROLES?},access-plugin-impersonator"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

You will now be able to generate signed certificates for the access-plugin role and user.

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-slack-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-slack-identity. This contains the private key and signed certificates needed by the plugin to authenticate with the Teleport Auth Service.

Step 5/8. Register a Slack app​

The Access Request plugin for Slack receives Access Request events from the Teleport Auth Service, formats them into Slack messages, and sends them to the Slack API to post them in your workspace. For this to work, you must register a new app with the Slack API.

Create your app​

Visit https://api.slack.com/apps to create a new Slack app. Click "Create an App", then "From scratch". Fill in the form as shown below:

Create Slack App

The "App Name" should be "Teleport". Click the "Development Slack Workspace" dropdown and choose the workspace where you would like to see Access Request messages.

Generate an OAuth token with scopes​

Next, configure your application to authenticate to the Slack API. We will do this by generating an OAuth token that the plugin will present to the Slack API.

We will restrict the plugin to the narrowest possible permissions by using OAuth scopes. The Slack plugin needs to post messages to your workspace. It also needs to read usernames and email addresses in order to direct Access Request notifications from the Auth Service to the appropriate Teleport users in Slack.

After creating your app, the Slack website will open a console where you can specify configuration options. On the sidebar menu under "Features", click "OAuth & Permissions".

Scroll to the "Scopes" section and click "Add an OAuth Scope" for each of the following scopes:

  • chat:write
  • incoming-webhook
  • users:read
  • users:read.email

The result should look like this:

API Scopes

After you have configured scopes for your plugin, scroll back to the top of the OAuth & Permissions page, find the "OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace" section, and click "Install to Workspace". You will see a summary of the permission you configured for the Slack plugin earlier.

In "Where should Teleport post?", choose "Slackbot" as the default channel the plugin will post to. The plugin will post here when sending direct messages. Later in this guide, we will configure the plugin to post in other channels as well.

After submitting this form, you will see an OAuth token in the "OAuth & Permissions" tab under "Tokens for Your Workspace":

OAuth Tokens

You will use this token later when configuring the Slack plugin.

Step 6/8. Configure the Teleport Slack plugin​

At this point, the Teleport Slack plugin has the credentials it needs to communicate with your Teleport cluster and the Slack API. In this step, you will configure the Slack plugin to use these credentials. You will also configure the plugin to notify the right Slack channels when it receives an Access Request update.

Create a configuration file​

The Teleport Slack plugin uses a configuration file in TOML format. Generate a boilerplate configuration by running the following command (the plugin will not run unless the config file is in /etc/teleport-slack.toml):

$ teleport-slack configure | sudo tee /etc/teleport-slack.toml > /dev/null

This should result in a configuration file like the one below:

(!examples/resources/plugins/teleport-slack.toml!)

Edit the configuration file​

Open the configuration file created for the Teleport Slack plugin and update the following fields:

[teleport]

The Slack 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

[slack]

token: Open https://api.slack.com/apps, find the Slack app you created earlier, navigate to the "OAuth & Permissions" tab, copy the "Bot User OAuth Token", and paste it into this field.

[role_to_recipients]

The role_to_recipients map configure the channels that the Slack plugin will notify when a user requests access to a specific role. When the Slack plugin receives an Access Request from the Auth Service, it will look up the role being requested and identify the Slack channels to notify.

Here is an example of a role_to_recipients map. Each value can be a single string or an array of strings:

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "admin-slack-channel"
"dev" = ["dev-slack-channel", "admin-slack-channel"]
"dba" = "alex@gmail.com"

In the role_to_recipients map, each key is the name of a Teleport role. Each value configures the Slack channel (or channels) to notify. Each string must be either the name of a Slack channel (including a user's direct message channel) or the email address of a Slack user. If the recipient is an email address, the Slack plugin will use that email address to look up a direct message channel.

The role_to_recipients map must also include an entry for "*", which the plugin looks up if no other entry matches a given role name. In the example above, requests for roles aside from dev and dba will notify the admin-slack-channel channel.

Suggested reviewers

Users can suggest reviewers when they create an Access Request, e.g.,:

$ tsh request create --roles=dbadmin --reviewers=alice@example.com,ivan@example.com

If an Access Request includes suggested reviewers, the Slack plugin will add these to the list of channels to notify. If a suggested reviewer is an email address, the plugin will look up the the direct message channel for that address and post a message in that channel.

Configure the Slack plugin to notify you when a user requests the editor role by adding the following to your role_to_recipients config (replace TELEPORT_USERNAME with the user you assigned the editor-reviewer role earlier):

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "access-requests"
"editor" = "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

Either create an access-requests channel in your Slack workspace or rename the value of the "*" key to an existing channel.

Invite your Slack app​

Once you have configured the channels that the Slack plugin will notify when it receives an Access Request, you will need to ensure that the plugin can post in those channels.

You have already configured the plugin to send direct messages as Slackbot. For any other channel you mention in your role_to_recipients map, you will need to invite the plugin to that channel. Navigate to each channel and enter /invite @teleport in the message box.

Step 7/8. Test your Slack app​

Once Teleport is running, you've created the Slack app, and the plugin is configured, you can now run the plugin and test the workflow.

Start the plugin:

$ teleport-slack start

If everything works fine, the log output should look like this:

$ teleport-slack start
INFO   Starting Teleport Access Slack Plugin 7.2.1: slack/app.go:80
INFO   Plugin is ready slack/app.go:101

Create an Access Request and check if the plugin works as expected with the following steps.

Create an Access Request​

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

$ tctl request create myuser --roles=editor

The user you configured earlier to review the request should receive a direct message from "Teleport" in Slack allowing them to visit a link in the Teleport Web UI and either approve or deny the 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

Once the request is resolved, the Slack bot will add an emoji reaction of ✅ or ❌ to the Slack message for the Access Request, depending on whether the request was approved or denied.

Auditing Access Requests

When the Slack plugin posts an Access Request notification to a channel, anyone with access to the channel can view the notification and follow the link. While users must be authorized via their Teleport roles to review Access Requests, 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.

Step 8/8. Set up systemd​

This section is only relevant if you are running the Teleport Slack 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-slack.service!)

Save this as teleport-slack.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-slack
$ sudo systemctl start teleport-slack

Next steps​