Kafka – Neo4j – SSL Config

This blogpost provides guidance to configure SSL security between Kafka and Neo4j. This will provide data encryption between Kafka and Neo4j. This does not address ACL confguration inside of KAFKA.

Self Signed Certificates

This section came from https://medium.com/talking-tech-all-around/how-to-enable-and-verify-client-authentication-in-kafka-21e936e670e8
Make sure that you have truststore and keystore JKSs for each server.+ In case you want a self signed certificate, you can use the following commands:

mkdir security
cd security

export PASSWORD=password
keytool -keystore kafka.server.keystore.jks -alias localhost -validity 365 -genkey
openssl req -new -x509 -keyout ca-key -out ca-cert -days 365
keytool -keystore kafka.server.truststore.jks -alias CARoot -import -file ca-cert
keytool -keystore kafka.client1.truststore.jks -alias CARoot -import -file ca-cert
keytool -keystore kafka.server.keystore.jks -alias localhost -certreq -file cert-file
openssl x509 -req -CA ca-cert -CAkey ca-key -in cert-file -out cert-signed -days 365 -CAcreateserial -passin pass:$PASSWORD
keytool -keystore kafka.server.keystore.jks -alias CARoot -import -file ca-cert
keytool -keystore kafka.server.keystore.jks -alias localhost -import -file cert-signed
keytool -keystore kafka.client1.keystore.jks -alias localhost -validity 365 -genkey
keytool -keystore kafka.client1.keystore.jks -alias localhost -certreq -file cert-file
openssl x509 -req -CA ca-cert -CAkey ca-key -in cert-file -out cert-signed -days 365 -CAcreateserial -passin pass:$PASSWORD
keytool -keystore kafka.client1.keystore.jks -alias CARoot -import -file ca-cert
keytool -keystore kafka.client1.keystore.jks -alias localhost -import -file cert-signed

Once the keystores are created, you have to move the kafka.client1.keystore.jks and kafka.client1.truststore.jks to your neo4j server.

Note: This article discusses addressing this error (Caused by: java.security.cert.CertificateException: No subject alternative names present) that may appear when querying the topic. https://geekflare.com/san-ssl-certificate/ 

Kafka Configuration

Connect to your Kafka server and modify the config/server.properties file.
This configuration worked for me but I have seen other configurations without the EXTERNAL and INTERNAL settings.
This configuration is for Kafka on AWS but should work for other configurations.

listeners=EXTERNAL://0.0.0.0:9092,INTERNAL://0.0.0.0:19092,CLIENT://0.0.0.0:9093,SSL://0.0.0.0:9094
listener.security.protocol.map=EXTERNAL:PLAINTEXT,INTERNAL:PLAINTEXT,CLIENT:PLAINTEXT,SSL:SSL
advertised.listeners=EXTERNAL://aws_public_ip:9092,INTERNAL://aws_internal_ip:19092,CLIENT://aws_public_ip:9093,SSL://aws_public_ip:9094
inter.broker.listener.name=INTERNAL

ssl.keystore.location=/home/kafka/security/kafka.server.keystore.jks
ssl.keystore.password=neo4jpassword
ssl.truststore.location=/home/kafka/security/kafka.server.truststore.jks
ssl.truststore.password=neo4jpassword
ssl.key.password=neo4jpassword
ssl.enabled.protocols=TLSv1.2,TLSv1.1

ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=HTTPS
ssl.client.auth=required

Neo4j Configuration

The following is required for a Neo4j configuration. In this case, we are connecting to the public AWS IP address. The keystore and truststore locations point to the files that you created earlier in the steps.

Note: The passwords are stored in plaintext so limit access to this neo4j.conf file.

kafka.zookeeper.connect=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2181
kafka.bootstrap.servers=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9094
streams.sink.enabled=false
streams.sink.polling.interval=1000

streams.source.topic.nodes.neoTest=Person{*}

kafka.auto.offset.reset=earliest
kafka.group.id=neo4j
streams.sink.dlq=neo4j-dlq

kafka.acks=all
kafka.num.partitions=1
kafka.retries=2
kafka.batch.size=16384
kafka.buffer.memory=33554432

kafka.security.protocol=SSL
kafka.ssl.truststore.location=/home/ubuntu/security/kafka.client1.truststore.jks
kafka.ssl.truststore.password=neo4jpassword
kafka.ssl.keystore.location=/home/ubuntu/security/kafka.client1.keystore.jks
kafka.ssl.keystore.password=neo4jpassword
kafka.ssl.key.password=neo4jpassword
kafka.ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=HTTPS

dbms.security.procedures.whitelist=apoc.*
dbms.security.procedures.unrestricted=apoc.*
dbms.jvm.additional=-Djavax.net.debug=ssl:handshake

This line dbms.jvm.additional=-Djavax.net.debug=ssl:handshake is optional but does help for debugging SSL issues.

Testing

After starting Kafka and Neo4j, you can test by creating a Person node in Neo4j and then query the topic as follows: 

 ./bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic neoTest --from-beginning 

If you want to test using SSL, you would do the following:

1. Create a client-ssl.properties file consisting of:

security.protocol=SSL
ssl.truststore.location=/home/kafka/security/kafka.client.truststore.jks
ssl.truststore.password=neo4jpassword
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=

2. Query the topic:

./bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh –bootstrap-server 18.217.67.191:9094 –topic neoTest –consumer.config /home/kafka/client-ssl.properties –from-beginning