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A root daemon cannot reach a login keychain: securityd is per session and a key ACL needs a session to prompt in, so dropping uid is not enough. The daemon now answers certificate challenges from the System keychain itself, where MDM installs device identities, and launches "netbird posture cert-proof" into the console user's desktop session with launchctl asuser for the login keychain. Only the signature and the chain cross back, never the private key. The console user comes from SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser, bound with purego like the keychain calls. The login window reports no user, root, or "loginwindow", and all three are treated as no keychain to read, so a Mac at the lock screen sends device proofs alone. Adds info logging across the path: the keychain search list, per class query status and item counts, the chain built per candidate, and the verification error for every rejected candidate. A run that sends nothing now says why. README.md documents the trust model, the console user limitation and how to read the logs.
Certificate posture proofs
A peer answers a management certificate challenge by signing the challenge nonce with a private key it holds, and sending back the certificate chain. Management verifies the chain against the CAs configured on the check and verifies the signature, which proves the peer holds the key rather than merely a copy of the certificate.
The signature covers netbird-posture-cert-v1 || nonce || peerKey, so a proof is bound
to one WireGuard peer key and cannot be replayed by another peer.
Where certificates come from
| Platform | Store | Read by |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | System keychain | the daemon, directly |
| macOS | console user's login keychain | a helper in that user's desktop session |
| Windows | CNG / system certificate store | the daemon, directly |
| Linux and others | PEM directory, NB_CERT_STORE_DIR or /etc/netbird/certs |
the daemon, directly |
macOS: why the daemon cannot read a login keychain
The daemon runs as root from a LaunchDaemon. Its keychain search list is the System keychain, which is where MDM installs device identities, and nothing else. A user's login keychain is out of reach for reasons that are not about privilege:
login.keychain-dbis unlocked bysecuritydin the user's session. The daemon lives in a different Mach bootstrap namespace, so from where it stands the keychain is locked no matter which uid it runs as.- Every private key carries an ACL naming the applications allowed to use it. A process
that is not listed causes a consent prompt in the user's session. A daemon has no
session to show one in, so it receives
errSecInteractionNotAllowed (-25308)instead.
Dropping to the user's uid with SysProcAttr.Credential does not fix this: uid is
not what selects the securityd instance, the bootstrap namespace is. The process has to
enter the user's session, which is what launchctl asuser does.
macOS: the console user helper
When a certificate challenge arrives and the daemon is root, it:
- Reads the System keychain itself, so MDM device identities are answered with no user session involved.
- Resolves the console user with
SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser. - Launches itself as that user with
launchctl asuser <uid> sudo -u <user> -H netbird posture cert-proof, writing the challenges to the child's stdin as JSON and reading proofs from its stdout. - Merges both sets of proofs, dropping a leaf that both keychains hold.
The child runs RunHelper, which uses the ordinary KeychainStore — inside the user's
session it simply works. The private key never crosses the boundary; only the
signature and the certificate chain come back.
-H matters: it sets HOME, which is how the login keychain path is resolved.
netbird posture cert-proof is hidden and not meant to be run by hand. It writes proofs
to stdout and every log line to stderr, so stdout stays parseable.
Only the console user can be validated
This is the central limitation of the design, and it is deliberate.
A proof from a login keychain can only ever be produced for the user whose desktop session is currently open. Consequences worth designing around:
- At the login window there is no user proof. macOS reports no console user, or
attributes the console to root, and
CurrentConsoleUserreturns false for both. Only System keychain device proofs are sent. A posture check that demands a user certificate will fail on a Mac sitting at the lock screen before anyone logs in. - Logging out changes the answer. Posture can flip between compliant and non-compliant across logout, so management should treat "no proof" as its own state rather than as a failed check, or users get disconnected at the login window.
- Fast user switching picks one user. Other logged-in users keep valid sessions and unlocked keychains, but only the console user is asked. If you ever need all of them, enumerate GUI sessions instead of the console user.
- A locked keychain still blocks signing. A user can be logged in with their keychain locked (locked on sleep, or manually). The helper then needs an unlock prompt and may block, which is why the spawn has a 30s timeout and a failure is reported as "no proof" rather than an error.
- The first signature prompts. The user sees "netbird wants to use your confidential information stored in ...". Choosing Always Allow records the helper's designated requirement in the key's ACL, so it persists across restarts and updates while the signing identity is stable. Unsigned or ad-hoc development builds re-prompt every run.
What a user proof does and does not attest
It attests: some process in that user's session had ACL permission to use a private key whose certificate chains to CA X, and signed a nonce bound to this peer key.
It does not attest that the daemon controls the key, that the key is hardware-bound, or
that a particular binary produced the signature. Any code running in that user's session
with an existing ACL grant can produce the same signature by calling
SecKeyCreateSignature directly — the proof format is not a secret. The helper does not
create that capability, it only packages it.
If you need a stronger guarantee, use a device identity that never involves a user session (MDM into the System keychain, which the daemon reads directly), or a key that requires user presence for each signature (Secure Enclave or a PIV token).
Reading the logs
Everything in this path logs at info. A healthy macOS run shows, in order:
certificate posture: answering N certificate challenges from store *certproof.KeychainStore
macOS Security framework loaded for certificate posture, running as uid=0 euid=0
keychain search list contains 2 keychains
keychain search list[0]: /Library/Keychains/System.keychain
keychain identity query returned N items
certificate posture: asking the desktop session of "user" (uid 501) to answer N challenges
certificate posture: desktop session of "user" returned N proofs
peer meta carries N certificate posture proofs
Common outcomes and what they mean:
| Log line | Meaning |
|---|---|
keychain identity query returned errSecItemNotFound (-25300) |
The keychain is readable and holds no identity of that class. Any other OSStatus is a real access failure. |
holds no identities usable for certificate posture, but N readable certificates |
Reading works; the certificate is present without its private key, or is not there at all. |
no console user is logged in |
Login window. Device proofs only. |
has no issuer in the keychain |
The chain ships leaf-only and verifies only if the challenge supplies that exact root. |
challenge N rejected "..." : x509: unhandled critical extension |
The chain is fine but Go refuses an extension in it, which is common for Apple-issued certificates. |
challenge N matched none of the M candidates |
Every candidate was rejected; the preceding lines give the reason for each. |