Data

Grey Matter Data is a platform service for storing encrypted and security labeled file attachments. Its main functionalities are:

write files (in batch) with permissions (in the form of logic on groups) and security labels
read files back (in the context of access privilege, encoded into JWT claims)

Gm-data can exist as a singleton but also has optional dependencies, depending on the use case:

database (MongoDB) for storing metadata, including tree structure and file attributes
blob storage (AWS S3, or disk) for storing ciphertext blobs for files
permissions (JWT), where USER_DN is translated into a JSON Web Token (JWT) token for its signed privilege claims
message queue (Kafka), for where database records are duplicated for replication purposes; and for an audit log when files are accessed

It makes it easier to understand how it is setup by looking at the smallest possible standalone docker-compose of a running Grey Matter Data instance:

version: '2'
services:
  gmdata-standalone:
    networks:
      mesh:
        aliases:
          - gmdata-standalone
    image: docker.greymatter.io/development/gm-data:latest
    ports:
      - "8181:8181"
    depends_on:
      - mongo-ephemeral
      - jwt-standalone
    environment:
      - SLEEP_BEFORE_START=5
      - CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS=jwt-standalone
      - CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT=8080
      - CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX=/
      - CLIENT_PREFIX=
      - CLIENT_USE_TLS=false
      - CLIENT_HOST=localhost
      - CLIENT_PORT=8181
      - GMDATA_NAMESPACE=world
      - GMDATA_NAMESPACE_USERFIELD=email
      - JWT_API_KEY=Zm9vCg==
      - JWT_PUB=LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0KTUlHYk1CQUdCeXFHU000OUFnRUdCU3VCQkFBakE0R0dBQVFCSUVrNGpHL1FEMkZwNURxcmMrTzFPVy9CaG1BLwpKcmgyRFRaRWpybEZONnJYbTA0Vms0bUluNENZSmJ0VDdIQjc2cVJIeE9DNTFORVk0eFZHb1RUUVZta0Fnc3ljCllVdEdqZ3pKQUdTZExsSXZKSmtabWkrSjZBbWVtNng5UFZkajcxc2hHSnhNdjM4SDFTa2RRS29EZmllS3dZbFIKNENPUWFxdXdJVEpPYWd2R1VUQT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgUFVCTElDIEtFWS0tLS0tCg==
      - TEST_JWT_PRIV=LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQUklWQVRFIEtFWS0tLS0tCk1JSGNBZ0VCQkVJQUludTVqbEdaU2Z6M2dMOWczOVNoeE5UaWtUQ0lvUWtFVVUyckdnV1ZJTm9TN3RlM2d1Uk8KK2VKb3FDZTd0Z3pKL1RZcGVxU055elE2UGVTS2JmZC91K2FnQndZRks0RUVBQ09oZ1lrRGdZWUFCQUVnU1RpTQpiOUFQWVdua09xdHo0N1U1YjhHR1lEOG11SFlOTmtTT3VVVTNxdGViVGhXVGlZaWZnSmdsdTFQc2NIdnFwRWZFCjRMblUwUmpqRlVhaE5OQldhUUNDekp4aFMwYU9ETWtBWkowdVVpOGttUm1hTDRub0NaNmJySDA5VjJQdld5RVkKbkV5L2Z3ZlZLUjFBcWdOK0o0ckJpVkhnSTVCcXE3QWhNazVxQzhaUk1BPT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFJJVkFURSBLRVktLS0tLQo=
      - MASTERKEY=fark
      - FILE_BUCKET=decipherers
      - FILE_PARTITION=gmdatax
      - USES3=false
      - MONGOHOST=mongo-ephemeral
      - MONGODB=chili
    volumes:
      - ./privacy.html:/static/privacy.html

  mongo-ephemeral:
    networks:
      - mesh
    image: mongo

  jwt-standalone:
    networks:
      - mesh
    image: nexus.greymatter.io/gm-jwt-security:1.1.1
    environment:
      - JWT_PUB=LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0KTUlHYk1CQUdCeXFHU000OUFnRUdCU3VCQkFBakE0R0dBQVFCSUVrNGpHL1FEMkZwNURxcmMrTzFPVy9CaG1BLwpKcmgyRFRaRWpybEZONnJYbTA0Vms0bUluNENZSmJ0VDdIQjc2cVJIeE9DNTFORVk0eFZHb1RUUVZta0Fnc3ljCllVdEdqZ3pKQUdTZExsSXZKSmtabWkrSjZBbWVtNng5UFZkajcxc2hHSnhNdjM4SDFTa2RRS29EZmllS3dZbFIKNENPUWFxdXdJVEpPYWd2R1VUQT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgUFVCTElDIEtFWS0tLS0tCg==
      - PRIVATE_KEY=LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQUklWQVRFIEtFWS0tLS0tCk1JSGNBZ0VCQkVJQUludTVqbEdaU2Z6M2dMOWczOVNoeE5UaWtUQ0lvUWtFVVUyckdnV1ZJTm9TN3RlM2d1Uk8KK2VKb3FDZTd0Z3pKL1RZcGVxU055elE2UGVTS2JmZC91K2FnQndZRks0RUVBQ09oZ1lrRGdZWUFCQUVnU1RpTQpiOUFQWVdua09xdHo0N1U1YjhHR1lEOG11SFlOTmtTT3VVVTNxdGViVGhXVGlZaWZnSmdsdTFQc2NIdnFwRWZFCjRMblUwUmpqRlVhaE5OQldhUUNDekp4aFMwYU9ETWtBWkowdVVpOGttUm1hTDRub0NaNmJySDA5VjJQdld5RVkKbkV5L2Z3ZlZLUjFBcWdOK0o0ckJpVkhnSTVCcXE3QWhNazVxQzhaUk1BPT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFJJVkFURSBLRVktLS0tLQo=
      - TOKEN_EXP_TIME=30000
      - REDIS_HOST=
      - ENABLE_TLS=false
      - ZEROLOG_LEVEL=debug
      - JWT_API_KEY=Zm9vCg==
    ports:
      - "8480:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./users.json:/gm-jwt-security/etc/users.json
networks:
  mesh: {}

In this setup:

gmdata-standalone points directly to a JWT server, jwt-standalone, so that the USER_DN header can look up a JWT token. Alternatively, a userpolicy cookie can be set with this JWT in the browser; so that no lookup is required.
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT vars are setup to talk plaintext to jwt-standalone, to turn a USER_DN into JWT claims. JWT_API_KEY is a shared password that allows the USER_DN to be turned into a JWT; a privileged operation only allowed behind the mesh.
gmdata-standalone talks to mongo-ephemeral, which is a simplified MongoDB that is not persisting to disk.
gmdata-standalone does not use S3 for storage, and is not mounting persistence for its blobs.
Setup the signing keypair JWT_PUB/TEST_JWT_PRIV so that Grey Mater Data can check the signatures on JWT and we can also use this container to generate JWTs to set on userpolicy cookie if we want to.
- CLIENT env vars are just here to facilitate connecting /static/gmdatatool.linux binary to Grey Matter Data for administrative tasks such as creating a JWT.
GMDATA_NAMESPACE sets how the system is configured, which you can validate with GET /config. We want to have home directories fit the pattern /world/${email}, so that users can create their own home directory to write files into; without involving an administrator to set them up.
The jwt-standalone server is configured to issue JWTs that expire in 3000 seconds and will stop caching them in half that time (1500 seconds) to ensure that tokens always have enough time to be actually used when we are given a token.
- Redis is disabled so jwt-standalone needs no Redis for persistence
- JWT_API_KEY is a shared password with gmdata-standalone to allow use of privileged /policies endpoint to convert a USER_DN into a JWT.
- The jwt-standalone has a user database in users.json file. The entries in this database are the JWT claims that get signed (with privileges removed from entries by default).

When a call to gmdata-standalone has a USER_DN set, it looks into this data structure in users.json to match up its label field with USER_DN, to create a JWT with this label and values field.

The privilege field is removed by default, as this is used in a sudo mechanism to allow for privilege escalation when needed.

See usage for how to form a request to upload and download files. It is critically important that you understand the policy language before trying to upload files; because there is a permission system that requires that either the UI or the User can express the desired permissions.

Environment Variables

Environment and Deployment

Grey Matter Data creates a binary called gmdatax.linux, that is configured entirely by environment variables (to avoid a requirement to mount files). This binary however is packaged with some other files.

./runforever - A shell script that keeps ./gmdatax.linux in a re-start loop to handle non-intentional crashes of the binary. This allows us to catch things like array out of bounds, nil pointer de-reference, or catastrophic resource exhaustion such as out of file handles. It is these latter cases that drive the decision to allow the binary to die.
./gmdatax.linux - The actual binary that reads in environment variables
./VERSION - The version of this service
./static/ - A bundle of runtime API user documentation, and test user interface. This directory is literally served out of the service from the /static/ endpoint.
./certs/ - A directory that the binary can write certificates into on startup. The certificates originate from environment variables passed in as single-line base64 encoding full pem files.
./logs/ - A place to write logs (in non-default cases), and may be mounted over to keep the root partition from running out of space.

Grey Matter Data will make every possible attempt to look at your configuration and immediately crash with a detailed explanation of what to actually do about it. This includes looking up hostnames in DNS to verify that they exist. Always look in the log files for the service if something does not seem right on startup. It cannot, however, detect inconsistency issues at a higher level, such as one service offering a cert that is then trusted by a service that will try to connect to it. That would require analyzing a larger set of environment variables that are destined for multiple services.

Basic Environment Variables

MASTERKEY is mandatory. This is the key that is used to encrypt data.
JWT_PUB is the single-line base64 encode of the signing key that the Grey Matter Data server trusts to sign JWT tokens. This is a mandatory parameter. It is not an X509 certificate. It is an actual Elliptic Curve key that is suitable for ES512 in the JWT standard.
FILE_BUCKET is mandatory (aka: AWS_S3_BUCKET). This is where we write Grey Matter Data ciphertext out to AWS.
FILE_PARTITION is mandatory (aka: AWS_S3_PARTITION). This should be set to a value that is unique to a set of replicated Fabric clusters. It is literally a subdirectory in FILE_BUCKET. This exists so that we don't need to create lots of buckets constantly, yet can still distinguish which bucket data belongs to which installation.
AWS_REGION is required if USES3=true.
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT is only required in government setups that need to point to a different hostname for S3.
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY may be set to give AWS credentials in the case where IAM roles are not used for the EC2 instance. AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY is a secret, obviously.

When you disable S3 usage via USES3=false, the local bucket and partition are still used. The directory ./buckets/${FILE_BUCKET}/${FILE_PARTITION} should exist and be writable by the Grey Matter Data process ./gmdatax.linux.

The JWT_PUB is the public part of an elliptic curve key. The private part of it is PRIVATE_KEY for the JWT server. The parameters for use with the JWT libraries are rather specific, due to the curve name secp521r1. This is how we generate our keypairs, which is done specifically for gm-jwt-security to get a private key for signing (file jwtES512.key), and then the public key derived from that (jwtES512.key.pub) and set for Grey Matter Data as JWT_PUB.

openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp521r1 -noout -out jwtES512.key
openssl ec -in jwtES512.key -pubout -out jwtES512.key.pub

References Between services

When Grey Matter Data needs to make reference to another service, these are the relevant environment variables:

CLIENT_PREFIX is the URL that the gateway is mapping the Grey Matter Data service to. This is done so that we can send back links that resolve properly in HTML files. We do this because we cannot hardcode even our own service name, and also cannot correctly give a relative path e.g. /services/gmdatax/latest.
CLIENT_JWT_PREFIX is the URL that the gateway is mapping our peer service gm-jwt-security to. This is done so that we can send back links that resolve properly in HTML files e.g. /services/jwt-server/1.0 or /services/jwt-server-gov/1.0.

We have explicit dependencies on these things:

A JWT token issuer that has a proper sidecar and is reachable through the edge.
A Mongo database that is not mounted into the Fabric framework; so is not reached via a sidecar or through the edge.
A Kafka deployment that is not mounted into the Fabric framework; so is not reached via a sidecar or through the edge.

TLS

Services that use TLS will end up creating a large number of environment variables. We follow a principle of passing in pem files as a single line of base64 of the original pem file. That means that we create such files as environment variables on the host that is preparing the deployment. Here is an example of setting up the trust for our Mongo dependency:

MONGO_TRUST=`cat server.trust.pem | base64 -w 0`

When TLS connections to peer services are involved, this pattern in name suffixes arises:

ADDRESS (or HOST) - IP or hostname of the peer
PORT - port for the peer
USE_TLS - use TLS
CERT - A base64 single-line encode of the pem cert (which also happens to be multi-line base64).
KEY - base64 single-line encode of the pem key (which is a multi-line base64). This is also a secret.
TRUST - This is similar to CERT. It may encode a concatenated list of pem files for certs.
CN - The ServerName expected. This is usually the same as the CN in the remote cert, but may also be an SNI name that matches a wildcard in the CN. If this is not set, then we will contact the server to try to grab the CN out of the remote certificate.

With that being said, these variables are grouped together.

MONGO related connect info
- MONGOHOST - Slightly violates our pattern. This can be a list of host:port pairs, like mongodata:27017,mongodata:27017. This is because in a clustered setting, connections are not made to individual machines, but to entire clusters. The PORT part is already taken care of.
- MONGODB - Is not strictly part of TLS, but we need to know the database that we are connecting to.
- MONGO_USE_TLS - Says whether to use the TLS variables to make a TLS connection.
- MONGO_CERT - Is the client PKI cert that we identify ourselves with.
- MONGO_KEY - Is the key that goes with MONGO_CERT.
- MONGO_TRUST - Is the trust file to connect to Mongo servers.
- MONGO_CN - Is the SNI name for the Mongo cert with the manually set ServerName expected. If this is not set, then we will contact the server to try to grab the CN out of the remote certificate.
- MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME - Is the username we will use (not necessarily related to the root username however).
- MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD - The password for MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME. This is a secret of course.
TLS info for the Grey Matter Data service. This generally only happens when the sidecar egress is mTLS.
- GMDATA_USE_TLS - Says whether to use TLS. This will need to be coordinated with how our sidecar is setup. Our sidecar EGRESS will need to be a client of this TLS connection.
- GMDATA_CERT - The identity cert of the Grey Matter Data service that will be presented to sidecar.
- GMDATA_KEY - The key that goes with GMDATA_CERT.
- GMDATA_TRUST - The sidecar will need to present a cert that is signed by something in this TRUST.
Client JWT environment variables are relevant to Grey Matter Data looking up userpolicyid (a random key to find a JWT) to get a userpolicy (an actual JWT token). This is only needed in cases where we have a JWT server indirectly via userpolicyid.
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS - is the hostname of the JWT server
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT - is the port of the JWT server
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_USE_TLS
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_CERT
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_KEY
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_CN - expected SNI name
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_TRUST
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX - If we connect directly to the service or to the sidecar, then this is just left as an empty string. But if we go through the edge, which is an unlikely case, this ends up needing to be set to the same value as CLIENT_JWT_PREFIX.
- JWT_API_KEY - is a base64 password that the JWT server will require to accept connections to resolve access codes for JWT tokens (userpolicyid) to actual JWT tokens (userpolicy).

Note that for the JWT server, we are trying to form a connection URL like:

# proto is either HTTP or HTTPS depending on CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_USE_TLS
# cert setup is the normal pattern:
# CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_CERT
# CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_KEY
# CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_TRUST
GET ${proto}://${CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS}:${CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT}${CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX}/policies

Internally, Grey Matter Data sees a userpolicyid header and connects to that URL to try to get a userpolicy object, which may be too large to have fit into an HTTP header. Notice that the inclusion of CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX exists only to go through the edge instead of the sidecar. In the normal case CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX is an empty string because we want to talk to the sidecar.

Examples:

Talk to our own local sidecar in plaintext to reach JWT (preferred):
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX=/services/jwt-server/latest
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS=gmdata-proxy
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT=8080
Talk to a JWT sidecar directly (not preferred):
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX=
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS=jwt-server-proxy
- CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT=8080

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_USE_TLS may require connecting to a sidecar-issued cert, that may not exist at the time Grey Matter Data launches. So, note that using GMDATA_USE_TLS in the mesh may be complicated by this fact.

Miscellaneous parameters

DONT_PANIC - Is an advanced parameter that says to only WARN, but do not CRASH when inconsistent environment variables are detected. If you run with this setting, you run the risk of creating a setup that we cannot support. Sometimes you need to temporarily ignore known problems. So, this should be disabled as soon as possible, if it is ever used.
LESS_CHATTY_INFO - By default, we like less chatty logs. If you want a lot more logging information that includes the start and end of sessions in which there were no problems, then you can set this to false.
GMDATAX_SESSION_MAX - Is an admission control value. This imposes a limit on the number of outstanding requests Grey Matter Data will allow to be concurrently serviced. It is literally a maximum population at which Grey Matter Data just issues 503 to tell the client to get out of line and come back later. It exists because if we run out of filehandles, the server will become unstable and crash in an irregular manner. If this server runs out of filehandles, then GMDATAX_SESSION_MAX should be lowered to a value that causes us to stop running out of filehandles. It may need to be raised if we get 503 errors that actually originate from Grey Matter Data itself. Our proxy may also issue 503 in the case of admission control, which complicated determining which one ran out. It is more likely that Envoy will run out of filehandles before Grey Matter Data will, because the front-end is dealing with a lot of services concurrently.
GMDATA_NAMESPACE - Typical value is world. In order to avoid having to create root access tokens to get the system bootstrapped. We allow for the creation of a self-service directory. If this value is /world then the home directory can be created here, on the condition that the directory is named after the field mentioned in GMDATA_NAMESPACE_USERFIELD, which is typically email. For example: /world is created empty on initialization of Grey Matter Data. User uses static/ui to create directory /world/rob.johnson@email.com, which is only allowed because he came in with a JWT token matching {values: {email: ["rob.johnson@email.com"]}}.
GMDATA_NAMESPACE_USERFIELD - Typical value is email.

If an environment variable you are looking for was not mentioned here, it's likely something that is not needed to change in a normal setup.

All Environment Variables

Since these are all env vars, these are all technically strings. But the Type is a hint about what format is required, when the description, default, or example doesn't make it clear. This table is ADVANCED, and it is an automatically generated listing of every environment variable that is referenced inside of the code. If anything in here is used frequently, it needs to be listed in the previous section.

Name

Default

Description

Example

Type

DISABLE_LOOKUPS

false

don't DNS check env vars representing hosts

true

boolean

DONT_PANIC

false

disable panic when environment looks mis-configured

true

boolean

LESS_CHATTY_INFO

true

chatty info logs will write something to the log when a transaction begins, when there are no problems

false

boolean

CLIENT_JWT_PREFIX

/services/gm-jwt-security/1.0

endpoint prefix for primary JWT service to resolve pointers to JWT tokens

/services/gm-jwt-security-gov/1.0

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS

IP of JWT server in the network

a hostname

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PORT

port of JWT server in the network

8443

an unsigned int

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_CERT

JWT server client cert

base64 line pem written to certs/jwt.cert.pem

mounted path or one-line base64

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_KEY

JWT server client key

base64 line pem written to certs/jwt.key.pem

mounted path or one-line base64

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_TRUST

JWT server trust

base64 line pem written to certs/jwt.trust.pem

mounted path or one-line base64

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_PREFIX

prefix to reach the CLIENT_JWT_PREFIX when proxied

localhost

path

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_USE_TLS

false

use TLS to connect to JWT endpoint

true

boolean

CLIENT_JWT_ENDPOINT_CN

the server name expected for this cert

hostname matching server cert cn

GMDATA_FABRIC_CLUSTER

default

the name of this fabric cluster

us-east

ZEROLOG_LEVEL

WARN

logging level: INFO, DEBUG, WARN, ERR

INFO

MASTERKEY

Master key for the encrypted content

som3r9doMg1bberish

master key for the data

AWS_REGION

Bucket location

us-east-1

some non-whitespace token

AWS_S3_BUCKET

Bucket name, overridden by FILE_BUCKET

AWS_S3_BUCKET= must match a token without whitespace or special chars

AWS_S3_PARTITION

Subdirectory within the S3 bucket, overridden by FILE_PARTITION

username

FILE_BUCKET

Bucket name

FILE_BUCKET= must match a token without whitespace or special chars

FILE_PARTITION

Subdirectory within the file bucket

username

AWS_S3_ENDPOINT

Bucket host override

s3.region.aws.com

a hostname

AWS_REKOGNITION_ENDPOINT

Bucket host override

rek.region.aws.com

a hostname

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

Set if not using IAM roles for the machine

AKAI...

iam roles used

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Set if not using IAM roles for the machine

AEFE...

iam roles used

USES3

true

Use S3

false

S3 bucket setup

S3_TASKS

512

Max number of concurrent S3 tasks

an unsigned int

KAFKA_PEERS

Kafka nodes to talk to directly. A comma-delimited list of host:port pairs

localhost:9092

a comma-delimited list of host:port

KAFKA_TOPIC_UPDATE

Kafka topic for update events

gmdu

some non-whitespace token

KAFKA_TOPIC_READ

Kafka topic for read events

gmdr

some non-whitespace token

KAFKA_TOPIC_ERROR

Kafka topic for errors

gmde

some non-whitespace token

KAFKA_CONSUMER_GROUP

test1

Kafka consumer group id

imageconverters

some non-whitespace token

KAFKA_CERT

id cert

single line base64 of pem

KAFKA_CERT is expecting a single-line base64 encoded string

KAFKA_KEY

id key

single line base64 of pem

KAFKA_KEY is expecting a single-line base64 encoded string

KAFKA_TRUST

id trust

single line base64 of pem

KAFKA_TRUST is expecting a single-line base64 encoded string

KAFKA_USE_TLS

false

use TLS for kafka directly

true

boolean

KAFKA_CN

false

cn for kafka

true

boolean

TEST_JWT_PRIV

TEST ONLY! a base64 encoded single line of the private key for internal signing during tests

base64 encoded line

JWT_PUB

the single-line base64 encode of the public key of JWT tokens we accept