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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.4] ›Secure a cluster ›Configuring security in Elasticsearch

Configuring a native realm

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Configuring a native realm

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The easiest way to manage and authenticate users is with the internal native realm.

The native realm is available by default when no other realms are configured. If other realm settings have been configured in elasticsearch.yml, you must add the native realm to the realm chain.

You can configure options for the native realm in the xpack.security.authc.realms namespace in elasticsearch.yml. Explicitly configuring a native realm enables you to set the order in which it appears in the realm chain, temporarily disable the realm, and control its cache options.

  1. Add a realm configuration of type native to elasticsearch.yml under the xpack.security.authc.realms namespace. At a minimum, you must set the realm type to native. If you are configuring multiple realms, you should also explicitly set the order attribute.

    See Native realm settings for all of the options you can set for the native realm. For example, the following snippet shows a native realm configuration that sets the order to zero so the realm is checked first:

    xpack:
  security:
    authc:
      realms:
        native1:
          type: native
          order: 0

    To limit exposure to credential theft and mitigate credential compromise, the native realm stores passwords and caches user credentials according to security best practices. By default, a hashed version of user credentials is stored in memory, using a salted sha-256 hash algorithm and a hashed version of passwords is stored on disk salted and hashed with the bcrypt hash algorithm. To use different hash algorithms, see User cache and password hash algorithms.

  2. Restart Elasticsearch.
  3. Manage your users in Kibana on the Management / Security / Users page. Alternatively, use the User Management APIs.
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