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Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

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Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#121

Post by kentonv »

unixhero wrote: post #65
gregorygoc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harsh truth of working at Google is that in the end you are moving protobufs from one place to another. They have the most talented people in the world but those people still have to do some boring engineering work.

Sandstorm.io kentonv protobufs?

Oh hai, you rang?

Sandstorm.io doesn't use protobuf, it uses Cap'n Proto, which was designed to replace protobuf.

Fun fact: The Zanzibar project was started in ~2011 specifically to replace my main project at the time, which was trying to solve the same problems. Apparently, some senior engineers felt letting me work on core infrastructure was too dangerous. They succeeded in turning my project into a lame duck and making me quit, which is when I then started working on Cap'n Proto and Sandstorm.io. In retrospect I'm glad it happened.

Yeah... Google is not always the most fun place to work on big infrastructure projects.

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#122

Post by ikiris »

rifung wrote: post #45
colesantiago wrote: post #6

I love reading about Google's systems, but I wish I could work on those problems at scale, that is my dream really. I wonder what more systems Google has that we don't know about. I know Borg has become what we know as k8s but surely there must be more things that Google has made internally that are not open source. Curious about this and would like to know more about it from anyone in the trenches at Google.

> I love reading about Google's systems, but I wish I could work on those problems at scale, that is my dream really. I wonder what more systems Google has that we don't know about. I work for Google and I used to have this exact thought too. I think the reality is not quite as rosy, though far from bad! You have to realize that there are hundreds of people who work on systems like this, and as a consequence, your da…

There's still plenty of opportunity to do things at scale and change or replace major systems entirely.

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#123

Post by dusty_mc_dusty »

jamafu wrote: post #63
victor106 wrote: post #37

What do other large (non-google scale) to medium companies use for authorization? Can anyone recommend open source (preferably) or close source products?

We use Keycloak at our place and are really happy with it. Website: https://www.keycloak.org/ GitHub: https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak

Jup, it's quite nice!

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#124

Post by eximius »

Semi-off topic: What is the latest and greatest in authorization mechanisms lately?

I like capability-based at on OS level, but sadly I'm not doing anything that interesting. For things like webapps, is there anything better than ACLs or Role-based. Or at least any literature talking about them? Probably overkill for the application I work on, but it'd be nice to take inspiration from best practices.

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#125

Post by argd678 »

usaar333 wrote: post #117
argd678 wrote: post #12

The distinguishing feature I see compared to other systems is the ACL ordering and consistency, which is indeed difficult to do at scale. Looks like Spanner is doing most the heavy lifting, great use case for the database.

Well even more broadly it is how generalizable it is, while still providing ordering guarantees (though not necessarily perfect ones.. see my long sibling post) Using Windows style ACEs for ACLs is also perfectly scalable and consistent, (and more performant) so long as users don't end up in too many groups and objects only inherit ACLs from objects on the same shard. It's just no where as generalizable as Zanzibar w…

I’ve been part of similarly generalized ACL systems and it’s pretty straightforward and very similar to Zanzibar. Though we didn’t need n ACLs and could assume the list wasn’t too long, so we didn’t need a tree. If we did, then we’d have ended up in a similar place as Zanzibar I believe, there are a limited number of ways to solve that problem.

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#128

Post by Dowwie »

zeeed wrote: post #127

I got stuck on the first line in the abstract: > Determining whether online users are authorized to access digital objects is central to preserving privacy. Can someone dissect that sentence and explain why that is? I honestly fail to make the connection.

Replace "digital object" with "a PDF of your checking account transactions for 2018". You want to control who can do what with that PDF. Your privacy is at stake.

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#129

Post by zeeed »

Dowwie wrote: post #128
zeeed wrote: post #127

I got stuck on the first line in the abstract: > Determining whether online users are authorized to access digital objects is central to preserving privacy. Can someone dissect that sentence and explain why that is? I honestly fail to make the connection.

Replace "digital object" with "a PDF of your checking account transactions for 2018". You want to control who can do what with that PDF. Your privacy is at stake.

Sure, that’s privacy in the sense of “no one can access my stuff, unauthorized”.

I struggled with the sentence cause, at the same time, creating one global centralized authentication source creates the opposite of privacy in the sense of anonymity. Certainly OT wrt the actual content of the work...

Re: Zanzibar: Consistent, Global Authorization System

#130

Post by fierro »

ngrilly wrote: post #57
rifung wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love reading about Google's systems, but I wish I could work on those problems at scale, that is my dream really. I wonder what more systems Google has that we don't know about. I work for Google and I used to have this exact thought too. I think the reality is not quite as rosy, though far from bad! You have to realize that there are hundreds of people who work on systems like this, and as a consequence, your da…

> there's no special wisdom and instead they just have more powerful primitives/tools to work with Reminds me of compound interests. Google operates at a scale where the company has enough brainpower to design systems like GFS/Colossus and Borg, which enable systems like Spanner, which enable systems like Zanzibar, and so on.

this is correct
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