ssh-hecate

Hecate simlifies the task of distributing ssh public keys in a network. Hecate uses Consul as a persistent store for a user's public keys and removes the need for users to push their public keys around the network. From a user perspective, the process is simple:

1. Run hecate provision to generate a SSH private/public key pair. The public key is uploaded to Consul. The private key never leaves the host.
2. Wait. Remote hosts running the Hecate daemon will periodically connect to Consul and generate a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file for each user that:
3. Has an account on the remote host AND
4. Has keys distributed via Hecate
5. SSH to the remote host... no password needed!

Installation

Install Dependencies

PIP

sudo apt-get install python-pip

Python Headers

sudo apt-get install python-dev

Install Hecate

pinky:ssh-hecate ncfritz$ pwd
/home/ncfritz/ssh-hecate
pinky:ssh-hecate ncfritz$ sudo ./install.sh 

Configure Hecate

pinky:ssh-hecate ncfritz$ sudo hecate config -e --global
Consul host [IP]: 192.168.0.10
Consul port: 8500
Token: 
Data Center: 
Verify SSL [y/N]: n

Provision a Key

pinky:ssh-hecate ncfritz$ hecate provision
Generating SSH key pair...
Public key uploaded successfully... user ncfritz is now provisioned for host vmhost-02
Please allow approximately 3 hours for public key propagation

Run the Daemon

pinky:ssh-hecate ncfritz$ sudo supervisord -c /usr/local/hecate/etc/supervisord.config 

Hecate Commands

Hecate contains several sub-commands

• provision - seeds a public key to Consul, creating a private/public key pair is necessary
• list - lists users in Consul, or the keys for a specific user
• get - retrieves the public key for a user/host combination
• delete - deletes a user from Consul, or a specific key for a user
• sync - synchronizes the authorized_keys for all, or a specific user/s
• config - displays or edits the Consul configuration
• daemon - runs the Hecate daemon

Running the Daemon

You can run the daemon in the foreground usinghecate daemon for debugging or testing purposes. It is recommended that you run the synchronizing daemon as a managed, long lived process using Supervisord. Hecate ships with a sample Supervisord config file in etc/supervisord.config. To run Supervisord locally use the following command:

sudo supervisord -c /usr/local/hecate/etc/supervisord.config 

Note that you need to run as root. Since Hecate will be creating/modifying the .ssh/authorized_keys files for all users it need to run as a priviledged user. You may also wish to run Supervisord on startup.