Apache Qpid™

To apply an ACL broker-wide, add the following to the config.xml (Assuming that conf has been set to a suitable location such as ${QPID_HOME}/etc)

      <broker>
        ...
        <security>
          ...
          <acl>${conf}/broker.acl</acl>
        </security>
      </broker>
    

To apply an ACL on a single virtualhost named test, add the following to the config.xml:

      <virtualhost>
        ...
        <name>test</name>
        <test>
          ...
          <security>
            <acl>${conf}/vhost_test.acl</acl>
          </security>
        </test>
      </virtualhost>
    

The ACL file consists of a series of rules and group definitions. Each rule grants or denies specific rights to a user or group. Group definitions declare groups of users and serve to make the ACL file more concise.

Each ACL rule grants (or denies) a particular action on a object to a user. The rule may be augmented with one or more properties, restricting the rule's applicability.

      ACL ALLOW alice CREATE QUEUE              # Grants alice permission to create all queues.
      ACL DENY bob CREATE QUEUE name="myqueue"  # Denies bob permission to create a queue called "myqueue"
    

The ACL is considered in strict line order with the first matching rule taking precedence over all those that follow. In the following example, if the user bob tries to create an exchange "myexch", the operation will be allowed by the first rule. The second rule will never be considered.

      ACL ALLOW bob ALL EXCHANGE
      ACL DENY bob CREATE EXCHANGE name="myexch"  # Dead rule
    

If the desire is to allow bob to create all exchanges except "myexch", order of the rules must be reversed:

      ACL DENY bob CREATE EXCHANGE name="myexch" 
      ACL ALLOW bob ALL EXCHANGE
    

All ACL files end with a implict rule denying all operations to all users. It is as if each file ends with

ACL DENY ALL ALL 

To allow all operations, other than those controlled by earlier use

ACL ALLOW ALL ALL 

instead.

When writing a new ACL, a good approach is to begin with an .acl file containing only

ACL DENY-LOG ALL ALL

which will cause the Broker to deny all operations with details of the denial logged to the Qpid log file. Build up the ACL rule by rule, gradually working through the use-cases of your system. Once the ACL is complete, switch the DEBY-LOG to DENY for optimum performamce.

ACL rules are very powerful: it is possible to write very expressive rules permissioning every AMQP objects enumerating all object properties. Most projects probably won't need this degree of flexibility. A reasonable approach is to choose to apply permissions at a certain level of abstraction (i.e. QUEUE) and apply consistently across the whole system.

ACL rules must follow this syntax:

     ACL {permission} {<group-name>|<user-name>>|ALL} {action|ALL} [object|ALL] [property="<property-value>"]
    

GROUP definitions must follow this syntax:

     GROUP {group name} {username 1}..{username n} # Where username is a username, or a groupname.
    

Comments may be introduced with the hash (#) character and are ignored. Long lines can be broken with the slash (\) character.

      # A comment
      ACL ALLOW admin CREATE ALL # Also a comment
      ACL DENY guest \
      ALL ALL   # A broken line
      GROUP securegroup bob \
      alice # Another broker line
    

Here are three example ACLs illustrating some common use-cases.

        # Give operator permission to execute all JMX Methods
        ACL ALLOW operator ALL METHOD
        # Give operator permission to execute only read-only JMX Methods
        ACL ALLOW readonly ACCESS METHOD
        # Deny operator/readonly permission to perform messaging.
        ACL DENY operator ACCESS VIRTUALHOST
        ACL DENY readonly ACCESS VIRTUALHOST
        ...
        ... rules for other users
        ...
        # Explicitly deny all (log) to eveyone 
        ACL DENY-LOG ALL ALL
      

        # Create a group usermaint with members bob and alice
        GROUP usermaint bob alice
        # Give operator permission to execute all JMX Methods
        ACL ALLOW usermaint ALL METHOD component="UserManagement"
        ACL DENY ALL ALL METHOD component="UserManagement"
        ...
        ... rules for other users
        ...
        ACL DENY-LOG ALL ALL
      

        # Allow client and server to connect to the virtual host.
        ACL ALLOW client ACCESS VIRTUALHOST
        ACL ALLOW server ACCESS VIRTUALHOST

        # Client side
        # Allow the 'client' user to publish requests to the request queue. As is the norm for the request/response paradigm, the client
        # is required to create a temporary queue on which the server will response.  Consequently, there are rules to allow the creation
        # of the temporary queues and consumption of messages from it.
        ACL ALLOW client CREATE QUEUE temporary="true"
        ACL ALLOW client CONSUME QUEUE temporary="true"
        ACL ALLOW client DELETE QUEUE temporary="true"
        ACL ALLOW client BIND EXCHANGE name="amq.direct" temporary="true"
        ACL ALLOW client UNBIND EXCHANGE name="amq.direct" temporary="true"
        ACL ALLOW client PUBLISH EXCHANGE name="amq.direct" routingKey="example.RequestQueue"
        
        # Server side
        # Allow the 'server' user to consume from the request queue and publish a response to the temporary response queue created by
        # client.  We also allow the server to create the request queue.
        ACL ALLOW server CREATE QUEUE name="example.RequestQueue"
        ACL ALLOW server CONSUME QUEUE name="example.RequestQueue"
        ACL ALLOW server BIND EXCHANGE
        ACL ALLOW server PUBLISH EXCHANGE name="amq.direct" routingKey="TempQueue*"
        
        ACL DENY-LOG all all