Why NiFi shouldn't restrict the policy removal for admin user?

Question

I am using nifi -1.2.0, enabled Kerberos authentication. I set the admin user in initial admin Identity property of authorizers.xml file. By Default, admin have full permission in NiFi. But admin can able to delete his own permission.

Once access policy removed for the admin user, then policies cannot be set to any other users by admin. This behaviour looks odd. Policy for admin should not be removed in any cases as we set admin user in authorizers.xml file.

Why nifi shouldn't restricted policy removal for admin user? Is there any need to delete permission for admin user itself.

Help me to understand the security flow.

Thanks, Matheswaran. S

Answer 1

It is possible to have multiple users with "admin" privileges (though to be clear, there is not a specific "admin" role; it is just a broad collection of individual resource policies), and to occasionally restrict those (another admin leaves the organization, transfers to a different role, etc.). I assume in this case, you are talking about the admin user removing the "access all policies" policy from their own account. If you feel that when there is only one user with that policy, they should not be able to remove it, I would suggest you file a Jira request to change this behavior.

Edit: It appears Matt Gilman filed a ticket for this issue: NIFI-4134.