Skip to main content

The Tricryption Console

The Tricryption Console is the key server's web administration tier: the administration the Java kS Manager offers, served to a browser, together with an audit-log reader. An operator signs in, and manages principals, groups, roles, ACL templates, certificates, trust and policy parameters, and reads the audit log, from one web application.

It is two packages:

  • te-console-server — the server process. It reaches the key server through the TypeScript agent (the same client documented in the TypeScript Agent SDK), and reads the audit log directly from the audit database.
  • te-console-web — the browser application, which talks to te-console-server's HTTP surface.

The Console listens on 127.0.0.1:18090 unless CONSOLE_HOST and CONSOLE_PORT say otherwise. It is a sibling of the REST Gateway, which exposes the key server to programs rather than people; the two are separate processes.

Signing in​

The Console signs operators in with a user name and password, over the key server's SRP-6a login — and in this release, only that way (ADR-0136). Certificate and LDAP sign-in to the Console, and an authentication-type selector, are outside this release. This is a boundary of the Console only: the key server's own certificate, LDAP and Kerberos logins are unaffected and remain available to every other client.

Principals​

Removing a principal hands its keys to a named recipient​

A key server key belongs to a principal, so removing a principal has to say who receives its keys. The Console asks the operator to name the recipient before anything is written, and refuses to remove a principal into itself (ADR-0131). It then checks the removed principal's keys in first — returning any key the principal had checked out to a Remote Engine — and only then removes the principal. A check-in the key server refuses does not stop the removal; the Console reports it alongside the result. The REST Gateway's removal route behaves the same way (ADR-0134).

Force check-in​

A principal whose session checked keys out to a Remote Engine can have them checked in by force from the Console. The action is offered on the principals that can own such a session — password, LDAP, certificate and XAuth users — and not on groups (ADR-0129).

Two kinds of certificate principal​

A certificate principal is one of two things: a certificate user, or the transport identity of a trusted key server, stored under that peer's system id. The Console tells them apart by system id and withholds the user controls — role and group sets, trust, disable and remove — from a peer's identity (ADR-0128).

Certificates​

The Console can issue a self-signed certificate authority into one of the key server's system certificate slots. The operator must name the slot; there is no default, and an occupied slot is replaced only when the operator names it a second time to confirm (ADR-0133).

For what the key server checks when a certificate is used to sign in, see Certificate Trust and Revocation.

The audit log​

The Console's audit view reads the key server's audit table and pages and filters in SQL, so a large log is never loaded into the browser (ADR-0135). It filters by operation (several at once), by principal type, and by principal name — a prefix match on either the acting principal or the object acted on — and shows each row's outcome as Succeeded or Failed. The current filtered view can be exported as CSV; the export re-runs the query on the server and streams it, and a server-side cancel stops it.