CF-Signer - CloudFormation Signing Utility

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Tool for signing and verifying the integrity of CloudFormation templates

Features

  • Signing CloudFormation templates by creating a sha256 hash of the file, encrypted with the user’s private key and store base64 form of the signature in the CloudFormation template Metadata section.

  • Verifying the integrity of CloudFormation templates by looking for the signature in the Metadata, extracting it and verifying.

  • Currently support JSON templates only. If you need to convert your template from YAML format, take a look on the CloudFormation Designer conversion or use a 3rd party utility.

Usage

Installation

To install cf-signer, run this command in your terminal:

pip install cf-signer

Preparation

First, the utility provides the prepare functionality that does the following:

  • Reading your template JSON file

  • Converting the template to Python dictionary object.

  • Converting the Python dictionary object back to a JSON file.

This is done to ensure that the tool will not tamper the template contents during the signing process.

To prepare a CloudFormation template to the signing process:

cf_signer --prepare --template cf.template

This will create a cf-prepared.template file you can sign using the cf-signer tool.

Getting Started

To sign a CloudFormation template using the cf-signer tool:

cf_signer --sign --template cf.template --key key.pem

To verify a signature of a CloudFormation template using the cf-signer tool:

cf_signer --verify --template cf-signed.template --key pubkey.pem

You can also use cf_signer in your Python code to sign templates on your scripts:

import cf_signer

def main():
    sign_result = create_signature(target_file_path='tests/cf.template', key_file_path='tests/key.pem') # Returns True

Signing Flow

The process of signing is based on the following flow:

  • Generate RSA private key:

    openssl genrsa -out key.pem 2048

  • Get public key from the RSA generated private key:

    openssl rsa -in key.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out pubkey.pem

  • Create a sha256 hash signature, encrypted with the private key:

    openssl dgst -sha256 -sign key.pem -out sign.sha256 cf.template

  • Convert the signature to base64 string:

    base64 -i sign.sha256 -o sign.b64

  • Attach the base64 signature to the CloudFormation template, under the Metadata block (creating one if it doesn’t exist).

Verification Flow

The process of signature verification is based on the following flow:

  • Detach the signature from the CloudFormation template

  • Convert the base64 detached signature string to binary format:

    base64 -d sign.b64 > sign.sha256

  • Validate the signature using the public key:

    openssl dgst -sha256 -verify pubkey.pem -signature sign.sha256 cf.template

Credits