RBAC Testing Validation¶

Validation Workflow Overview¶

RBAC testing validation is broken up into 3 stages:

1. “Expected” stage. Determine whether the test should be able to succeed or fail based on the test roles defined by [patrole] rbac_test_roles) and the policy action that the test enforces.

2. “Actual” stage. Run the test by calling the API endpoint that enforces the expected policy action using the test roles.

3. Comparing the outputs from both stages for consistency. A “consistent” result is treated as a pass and an “inconsistent” result is treated as a failure. “Consistent” (or successful) cases include:

   • Expected result is True and the test passes.
   • Expected result is False and the test fails.

   For example, a 200 from the API call and a True result from oslo.policy or a 403 from the API call and a False result from oslo.policy are successful results.

   “Inconsistent” (or failing) cases include:

   • Expected result is False and the test passes. This results in an RbacOverPermissionException exception getting thrown.
   • Expected result is True and the test fails. This results in a RbacOverPermissionException exception getting thrown.

   For example, a 200 from the API call and a False result from oslo.policy or a 403 from the API call and a True result from oslo.policy are failing results.

The RBAC Rule Validation Module¶

High-level module that provides the decorator that wraps around Tempest tests and serves as the entry point for RBAC testing validation. The workflow described above is ultimately carried out by the decorator.

For more information about this module, please see RBAC Rule Validation Module.

The Policy Authority Module¶

Module called by RBAC Rule Validation Module to verify whether the test roles are allowed to execute a policy action by querying oslo.policy with required test data. The result is used by RBAC Rule Validation Module as the “Expected” result.

For more information about this module, please see Policy Authority Module.

The RBAC Utils Module¶

This module is responsible for handling role switching, the mechanism by which Patrole is able to set up, tear down and execute APIs using the same set of credentials. Every RBAC test must perform a role switch even if the role that is being switched to is admin.

For more information about this module, please see RBAC Utils Module.