One thing to consider is using hiera e-yaml gpg based on certnames. You can put 
secrets (db passwords etc) here and they are matched to the SSL certname. In 
this configuration an attacker can change their role/profile but still cant 
access secrets for a particular node that doesn't match its certname.

That is not the only way but a fairly reasonable compromise.

Den



> On 13 Feb 2015, at 09:43, Alex Elman <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I don't think you should limit your agent's ability to dictate what resources 
> should be configured and served. The Puppet client-server trust model is 
> fairly flat and this provides a decent trade-off between flexibility and 
> security. If your agent is owned, then as you mention, you have bigger 
> concerns.
> 
> You do have some decently granular control over which agents get access to 
> which resources by using auth.conf. See 
> https://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/rest_auth_conf.html. Configuring auth.conf 
> on the master side, you can lock down certain resources using allow/deny 
> directives or ACLs for things other than facter facts like hostnames and ip 
> addresses. I would make sure you lock things down against unauthenticated 
> agents at the very least. Also be judicious about how you design your 
> auto-signing configuration if you're worried about rouge agents. See 
> https://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/3.7/reference/ssl_autosign.html.
> 
> -Alex
> 
>> On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 4:10 PM, UK_beginner <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I'm new to puppet and have been exploring different ways of configuring 
>> manifests, ranging from huge single manifests, through per-node and am 
>> currently looking at the role/profile patterns.
>> 
>> One thing I've been looking at is using a mix of puppet and hiera to set up 
>> a hierarchy based around server roles (i.e. web. database, logging etc.) 
>> using the environment and a custom fact set on the agents using 
>> /etc/facter/facts.d. For me this seems an efficient way to describe a 
>> configuration since it can avoid a lot of duplication.
>> 
>> However, some of the team I'm working with have concerns around the fact 
>> that we're letting the agents dictate what manifests get passed to them 
>> since they define the role & environment facts. I've been told that if 
>> someone found a 'root-level' exploit they could change the facts to retrieve 
>> whatever manifest they want - my response is if we get to that stage, all 
>> bets are off since they can just stop puppet, download rpm's etc.
>> 
>> However I wanted to gauge the feeling of the experts - is this a risky 
>> solution, or do others feel that as we implement other security factors 
>> (firewalls, correct file permissions, certificates) that this is an 
>> acceptable route to investigate?
>> 
>> Thanks in advance for you thoughts.
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Alex Elman
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