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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Elasticsearch: Heed the Warnings

A few posts on this blog have talked about different topologies one can use to deploy Sugar, either for development purposes or production use. Perhaps the most important point in those posts is the matter of ensuring that one should not expose the Elasticsearch server to any other machine besides the one where the web server is running.

Because Elasticsearch data can be read without any sort of user authentication, exposing an Elasticsearch server means one is allowing potentially malicious users to view sensitive data. Despite this risk, it is not uncommon to hear of Sugar implementations that are configured in ways where Elasticsearch can be directly accessed via the internet or local network. 

A few days ago, the dangers of such a configuration were further highlighted by ransomware makers. Reports have recently surfaced that data from exposed Elasticsearch servers is indeed being compromised and held hostage.

This threat may leave some Sugar administrators wondering about the impact this could have on their Sugar implementations and data.