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Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords

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Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords

#1
In 2023, AWS announced[1] IAM authentication for MSK Kafka clusters with support for "all programming languages"… except C++. While Java[2], Python[3], Go[4], and others got official SDKs, C++ developers/vendors were stuck hardcoding SCRAM-SHA credentials in code/configs or relying on heavier Java-based tools like Kafka Connect or Apache Flink.

Later, community projects added Rust[5] and Ruby[6] support. Why no C++? Rust might be the new favorite, but C++ is still king for high-performance data systems: minimal dependencies, lean resource use, and raw speed.

At Timeplus, we needed IAM auth for our C++ streaming engine, Proton, so we built it ourselves. Today, we’re open-sourcing our code for AWS MSK IAM authentication. It’s live in Timeplus Proton 1.6.12

Just attach an IAM role to your EC2 instance or EKS pod, then put the Timeplus Proton single binary inside, start the server, then run the following SQL to read or write MSK:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM msk_stream(column_defs) SETTINGS type='kafka',topic='topic2', brokers='prefix.kafka.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:9098', security_protocol='SASL_SSL', sasl_mechanism='AWS_MSK_IAM';

The core logic is just two files under 200 lines and you can reuse the code anywhere. https://github.com/timeplus-io/proton/blob/develop/src/IO/Ka... https://github.com/timeplus-io/proton/blob/develop/src/IO/Ka...

We’d love to get your feedback and work together to make this a standalone library—or even get it into ClickHouse or AWS SDK for C++.

For those curious about Timeplus Proton: it’s an open-source streaming engine we built in C++ (think “FlinkSQL in C++” meets ClickHouse’s columnar storage). Later this month, we will also open-source our C++ code for Apache Iceberg read&write. Stay tuned.

Links:

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/amazon-msk-iam-authent... [2] https://github.com/aws/aws-msk-iam-auth [3] https://github.com/aws/aws-msk-iam-sasl-signer-python [4] https://github.com/aws/aws-msk-iam-sasl-signer-go [5] https://docs.rs/aws-msk-iam-sasl-signer [6] https://rubygems.org/gems/aws-msk-iam-sasl-signer/

Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords
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Re: Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords

#8
post #7

It's interesting that AWS chose(?) not to support this. Can you think of any reason why they wouldn't have? Perhaps it's harder to predict use cases in C++?

I don't know exactly why AWS didn't include C++ SDK when they announced all languages are supported. Maybe it's more common today to use Java/Rust/Python to build data products, but C++ is still such a solid case. Anyway, I will try to reach out AWS team to see whether they are open to put this into the AWS SDK for C++

Re: Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords

#10
post #9

surprised since aws has sdk for c++ https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-cpp

I tried to find related code with iam and msk in the file names and failed. To get authenticated with MSK, need to get proper signed and pass to the MSK endpoints. Maybe AWS SDK team are just too busy or not get enough customer ask(escalations?) for using C++ to access MSK cluster with IAM only auth.
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