Validate an approved request signature

Each approved Access Approval request is signed with an asymmetric cryptographic key to validate the approval. Approved requests can be signed with a Google-owned and managed key or a customer-provided Cloud KMS key.

When you validate a signature, you can be sure that the bytestring of the serialized approved request is valid. To finish validating the contents of the approval, you must deserialize the message and compare the deserialized message with the contents of the approved request.

Before you begin

To ensure that the Access Approval service account for your resource has the necessary permissions to verify approved request signatures, ask your administrator to grant the Access Approval service account for your resource the Cloud KMS CryptoKey Signer/Verifier (roles/cloudkms.signerVerifier) IAM role on the key, key ring, or key project.

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

Your administrator might also be able to give the Access Approval service account for your resource the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Validate a request signed using a Google-owned and managed key

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Access Approval page.

   Go to Access Approval

2. Locate and select the approved Access Approval request that you want to validate. The Request details page opens.

3. Under Google-managed public key, click content_copy Copy.

4. Open the Cloud Shell, and then save the public key as a new file named public_key:

   echo GOOGLE_MANAGED_PUBLIC_KEY > ./public_key
   

   Replace GOOGLE_MANAGED_PUBLIC_KEY with the contents of the Google-managed public key field.

5. In the Google Cloud console, on the Request details page, under Signature, click content_copy Copy.

6. Open the Cloud Shell, and then save the signature as a new file named signature.txt:

   echo SIGNATURE > ./signature.txt
   

   Replace SIGNATURE with the contents of the Signature field.

7. Decode the signature using the base64 command and save the result as decoded_signature:

   base64 ./signature.txt -d > ./decoded_signature
   

8. In the Google Cloud console, on the Request details page, under Serialized Approval Request, click content_copy Copy.

9. Open the Cloud Shell, and then save the serialized approval request as a new file named serialized_approval_request.txt:

   echo SERIALIZED_APPROVAL_REQUEST > ./serialized_approval_request.txt
   

   Replace SERIALIZED_APPROVAL_REQUEST with the contents of the Serialized Approval Request field.

10. Decode the serialized approval request and save the result as decoded_serialized_approval_request:

    base64 ./serialized_approval_request.txt -d > ./decoded_serialized_approval_request
    

11. Use openssl to verify the signature:

    openssl dgst \
        -sha256 \
        -verify ./public_key \
        -signature ./decoded_signature \
        ./decoded_serialized_approval_request
    

    If the signature is valid, the output should be Verified OK. This confirms that the serialized approval request is valid.

Validate a request signed using a customer-provided key

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Access Approval page.

   Go to Access Approval

2. Locate and select the approved Access Approval request that you want to validate. The Request details page opens.

3. In the Google Cloud console, on the Request details page, under Signature, click content_copy Copy.

4. Open the Cloud Shell, and then save the signature as a new file named signature.txt:

   echo SIGNATURE > ./signature.txt
   

   Replace SIGNATURE with the contents of the Signature field.

5. Decode the signature and save the result as decoded_signature:

   base64 ./signature.txt -d > ./decoded_signature
   

6. In the Google Cloud console, on the Request details page, under Serialized Approval Request, click content_copy Copy.

7. Open the Cloud Shell, and then save the serialized approval request as a new file named serialized_approval_request.txt:

   echo SERIALIZED_APPROVAL_REQUEST > ./serialized_approval_request.txt
   

   Replace SERIALIZED_APPROVAL_REQUEST with the contents of the Serialized Approval Request field.

8. Decode the serialized approval request and save the result as decoded_serialized_approval_request:

   base64 ./serialized_approval_request.txt -d > ./decoded_serialized_approval_request
   

9. Under Customer-managed key, make note of the resource identifier of the key.

10. Retrieve the public key for the key that you identified in the previous step. Save the downloaded public key in the PEM format as ./public_key.

11. Use openssl to verify the signature:

    openssl dgst \
        -sha256 \
        -verify ./public_key \
        -signature ./decoded_signature \
        ./decoded_serialized_approval_request
    

    If the signature is valid, the output should be Verified OK. This confirms that the serialized approval request is valid.