karloie/bastille repository overview

⁠🏰 Bastille

Bastille is a simple SSH jump server written in Go with hardened cryptographic defaults (based on sshaudit.com⁠).

Named after the famous French fortress in Paris, the Bastille Saint-Antoine—famously stormed and sacked during the French Revolution.

⁠Usage

Deploy between networks on a rootless Docker or Podman host and secure it with a firewall.

⁠User access

Create home/ directory with user subdirectories containing authorized_keys. Mount at /home (read-only). Use permitopen to restrict destinations.

home/
├── lilo/
│   └── .ssh/
│       └── authorized_keys
├── nani/
│   └── .ssh/
│       ├── authorized_keys
│       └── ca.pub
└── stitch/
    └── .ssh/
        └── authorized_keys

Example home/lilo/.ssh/authorized_keys:

permitopen="172.16.4.12:22",permitopen="172.16.4.13:22" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIE2AwAOD0CjqmxGvstxApYZLg+oji5zMDpyxb0FS7Uw/ lilo@localhost

Example home/nani/.ssh/authorized_keys:

permitopen="172.16.4.12:22" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIJxT8KqPvqQHqhHjHqPqLqLz8YvZ1rDkjH8vN7aQvKL nani@localhost

Example home/stitch/.ssh/authorized_keys:

permitopen="172.16.4.13:22" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIMXLNYeiSxUg23XlqXj33yJG2iKF5dd9+DmeUM3JGte/ stitch@localhost

⁠Certificate authority (optional)

For per-user CA keys, add ca.pub files containing trusted CA public keys. Users can then authenticate with certificates signed by their CA.

Example home/nani/.ssh/ca.pub:

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIBq8FNKqPvqQHqhHjHqPqLqLz8YvZ1rDkjH8vN7aQvKL nani-ca

Users authenticate with signed certificates:

ssh-keygen -s /path/to/ca_key -I nani -n nani -V +52w ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
ssh [email protected] -J [email protected]:22222

⁠Host keys

Create writable hostkeys/ directory and mount at /hostkeys. Bastille auto-generates an ed25519 key on startup if missing, or you can pre-generate with ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f hostkeys/ssh_host_ed25519_key -N "".

⁠Runtime

services:
  bastille:
    image: karloie/bastille:0.1.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    cap_drop:
      - ALL
    ports:
      - 22222:22222/tcp
      - 9090:9090/tcp
    read_only: true
    tmpfs:
      - /run
      - /tmp
    volumes:
      - ./home:/home:ro
      - ./hostkeys:/hostkeys:rw
    environment:
      ListenAddress: ""
      Port: 22222
      MaxSessions: 5
      PerSourceMaxStartups: 10
      LogLevel: INFO
      StrictModes: no
      MetricsAddress: "0.0.0.0:9090"
      AuthorizedKeysFile: "/home/{user}/.ssh/authorized_keys"
      TrustedUserCAKeys: "/home/{user}/.ssh/ca.pub,/ca"
      HostKey: "/hostkeys"
      Ciphers: "[email protected],[email protected],aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,[email protected],aes128-ctr"
      KexAlgorithms: "[email protected],curve25519-sha256,[email protected],diffie-hellman-group18-sha512,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group16-sha512"
      MACs: "[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]"
      RequiredRSASize: 3072

Run with docker compose up -d.

Connect through jump server:

ssh [email protected] -J [email protected]:22222

⁠Configuration

Environment variables:

Server (OpenSSH-style where possible)

• ListenAddress (default empty; binds all interfaces)
• Port (default 22222)
• MaxSessions (default 5; per-user tunnel limit)
• PerSourceMaxStartups (default 10; per-source rate limit)
• LogLevel (INFO, VERBOSE, DEBUG, WARN, ERROR)
• StrictModes (default no) - enforces safe permissions on key file paths
• MetricsAddress (default empty; disabled) - Prometheus metrics endpoint (e.g., 0.0.0.0:9090)

Key paths (OpenSSH-style directive names; comma-separated; {user} placeholder and globs)

• AuthorizedKeysFile - authorized_keys files (e.g., /home/{user}/.ssh/authorized_keys)
• TrustedUserCAKeys - CA public keys (e.g., /ca for static, /home/{user}/.ssh/ca.pub for per-user)
• HostKey - server private keys (e.g., /hostkeys)

Crypto (OpenSSH directive names)

• Ciphers
• KexAlgorithms
• MACs
• RequiredRSASize (default 3072)

SMTP (Bastille-specific)

• SMTP_HOST, SMTP_MAIL, SMTP_USER
• SMTP_PORT (default 587)
• SMTP_PASS_FILE (default /run/secrets/smtp_pass)

Observability

• MetricsAddress - Prometheus metrics endpoint (e.g., 127.0.0.1:9090)
  • Exposes /metrics endpoint with connection stats, tunnel counts, auth failures, rate limits, bytes transferred
  • Exposes /health endpoint returning ok
  • Disabled by default (empty string)

Structure:

cmd/bastille/     Binary entry point
pkg/config/       Configuration, logging, path validation
pkg/crypto/       SSH crypto, authentication, CA keys
pkg/metrics/      Prometheus metrics (standalone)
pkg/server/       Server connection handling
doc/              Documentation and license
Containerfile     Production image
Makefile          Build automation

MIT - see LICENSE⁠