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41 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
41 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
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# ADR-003: Ephemeral SSH Keys with Opt-In Debug Access
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**Date:** 2026-04-09
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**Status:** Accepted
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**Deciders:** Till Wegmueller
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## Context
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The orchestrator generates an Ed25519 SSH keypair per job for authenticating to the provisioned VM. Currently, both public and private keys are persisted to PostgreSQL in plaintext (`job_ssh_keys` table). This creates a security risk — a database breach exposes all SSH keys.
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The keys are only needed during the VM's lifetime: from provisioning (cloud-init injects the public key) through SSH execution (orchestrator authenticates with the private key) to VM destruction.
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## Decision
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Make SSH keys fully ephemeral:
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1. Generate keypair in-memory
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2. Inject public key via cloud-init
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3. Use private key for SSH connection
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4. Forget both keys when VM is destroyed
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5. Never persist to database
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Exception: **opt-in debug SSH for failed builds**. When a job fails and the user has opted in (e.g., via a workflow annotation or label), keep the VM alive for a TTL (30 minutes) and expose SSH connection info in the build log so the user can debug inside the target OS.
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## Consequences
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### Positive
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- **Zero persistent key storage**: no database breach risk for SSH keys
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- **Simpler persistence layer**: `job_ssh_keys` table can be removed
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- **Debug SSH feature**: valuable for OS-specific debugging (illumos quirks, package issues) — similar to CircleCI's "rerun with SSH" and Buildkite's debug feature
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### Negative
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- **Cannot retroactively access a destroyed VM**: if the key is gone, there's no way back in
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- **Debug SSH adds complexity**: TTL management, rate limiting, VM lifecycle exception path
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- **Debug SSH is a security surface**: must ensure TTL is enforced and connection info only goes to the authenticated user via the platform's log channel
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### Design for debug SSH
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- Rate limit: max 1 debug session per project concurrently
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- TTL: 30 minutes, non-renewable, force-destroy on expiry
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- Connection info: printed as a build log step (platform controls access)
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- Opt-in: explicit flag required (never default)
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