SN-2026-025: IAM Cluster Import Re-Enabling Disabled Credentials and Console Inherited-Policy Freezing

Status: Shipped in SILO Console 2.7.1 (1be8a74bf, a1a84cab4, 1fdb279fd, 3825ebc44) and fixed on Server main (1d714834c, 34ba7cc1f, pending Server publication)
Identifier: SN-2026-025 (Security Advisory Ledger, #339, #345)
Severity: High
Affected scope: SILO Server (RELEASE.2026-11-09T00-00-00Z and earlier) and inherited upstream MinIO since 2022-06-23 (580d9db85); SILO Console (v2.7.0 and earlier, standalone and embedded) and inherited upstream MinIO Console since 2024-02-29 (0afea6399)
Client & UI notes: Pair the repaired Server and Console 2.7.1 together (mcli 20261112 d7262c2a also aligns explicit empty-policy resets on accesskey edit)

Following the audit of service-account policy updates in SN-2026-021, we reviewed the full lifecycle of service accounts and IAM groups across backup/restore (ExportIAM / ImportIAM), the Web Console, and expiring credentials. That review uncovered two inherited privilege-state defects:

1. Cluster IAM import (mcli admin cluster iam import) silently reactivated disabled credentials and groups: importIAM (cmd/admin-handlers-users.go) omitted the exported Status field when recreating service accounts and ignored disabled group status when importing groups.json, turning every disabled/revoked service account and disabled group back "on" during disaster recovery or cluster migration.
2. Console metadata edits froze inherited parent policies and blocked disabling keys under large parent policies: Because InfoServiceAccount returns the parent user’s effective policy text alongside ImpliedPolicy: true, Console’s EditServiceAccount modal populated its inline policy editor with the parent’s policy and submitted it back on any metadata save—converting an inherited-policy key into a static embedded-policy copy, and failing outright (400 errSessionPolicyTooLarge, with the error hidden behind the modal) when an operator tried to disable an inherited service account whose parent policy exceeded 4 KiB.

Summary

• What went wrong:
  1. ImportIAM dropped Status on service accounts and groups (#345): In cmd/admin-handlers-users.go, importIAM built newServiceAccountOpts without status: svcAcctReq.Status (causing NewServiceAccount to default every imported key to AccountOn = "on"), never called SetGroupStatus(ctx, grp, false) when grpInfo.Status == statusDisabled, and recorded Error: err (nil) instead of gerr in failed.Groups when AddUsersToGroup failed.
  2. Console EditServiceAccount conflated ImpliedPolicy display text with an inline restriction (#339): Whenever an operator renamed, described, set expiry on, or toggled status for an inherited-policy access key in Console, the UI sent the parent user’s combined policy JSON as newPolicy, permanently embedding a point-in-time copy of the parent’s policy. When the parent’s combined policy exceeded maxSVCSessionPolicySize (4096 bytes after whitespace compaction), operators could not even disable or edit the inherited key in Console—and the modal swallowed the API error notification.
  3. Expiring service accounts omitting "Version" failed authorization at runtime: NewServiceAccount accepted inline policies without "Version", which worked for non-expiring keys (isAllowedLocally) because Policy.IsAllowed ignores Version, whereas isAllowedBySessionPolicy (cmd/iam.go, used whenever cred.IsTemp() is true—including any service account with an Expiration timestamp) required subPolicy.Version != "" and denied every S3/Admin request with 403.
• Upstream provenance:
  • ImportIAM status omission and nil group error reporting: upstream MinIO 580d9db85 (2022-06-23, minio/minio#15014).
  • Expiring service-account "Version" mismatch: upstream MinIO eae9c2f65 (2021-07-15, minio/minio#12716) combined with 4d708cebe (2023-02-27, minio/minio#16430).
  • Console inherited-policy submission: upstream MinIO Console 0afea6399 (2024-02-29, #3221).
• Fix: Server commit 1d714834c passes status: svcAcctReq.Status during importIAM, applies disabled group status after group creation, records the real gerr on group import failure, and normalizes non-empty versionless inline policies to policy.DefaultVersion ("2012-10-17"). Console commits 1be8a74bf, a1a84cab4, and 1fdb279fd track ImpliedPolicy separately from inline restrictions and surface save errors directly inside the modal.

1. Upstream Provenance and Root Cause

ImportIAM Reactivating Disabled Service Accounts and Groups

ExportIAM (GET /minio/admin/v3/export-iam) serializes every service account (including "accountStatus": "off") into svcaccts.json and every group (including "status": "disabled") into groups.json. When upstream introduced importIAM in 580d9db85 (2022-06-23), the user import loop checked u.Status == AccountOff and persisted disabled users accurately—but both the service-account loop and the group loop dropped status:

1. Service accounts: importIAM decoded svcAcctReq.Status, yet omitted status: when constructing newServiceAccountOpts. Inside NewServiceAccount (cmd/iam.go), an empty opts.status defaults to auth.AccountOn ("on"). Every service account that an administrator had disabled (mcli admin user svcacct disable)—for example, to quarantine a leaked key while preserving audit history—became active again immediately upon mcli admin cluster iam import.
2. Groups: AddUsersToGroup always creates or updates groups in "enabled" status unless SetGroupStatus(ctx, grp, false) is called. Because importIAM never checked grpInfo.Status == statusDisabled, every disabled group resumed granting all of its attached Allow policies to member users after an IAM import. Furthermore, when AddUsersToGroup returned an error gerr, the handler appended madmin.IAMErrEntity{Name: grp, Error: err}—where outer err was nil from json.Unmarshal—reporting a failed group import with an empty error reason.

Console EditServiceAccount Freezing Parent Policy and Blocking Disable

On the server, InfoServiceAccount (cmd/admin-handlers-users.go) sets ImpliedPolicy: true when an access key inherits its parent’s permissions, and populates Policy with the JSON rendering of the parent user’s (and groups’) combined policies for read-only display.

In upstream Console (0afea6399, 2024-02-29), EditServiceAccount.tsx initialized its Restrict beyond user policy toggle to false when impliedPolicy was true, yet pre-filled the backing policy state string with account.policy and unconditionally sent policy whenever policy !== "" on save:

• Silent conversion from inherited to frozen inline policy: Editing only an access key’s name, description, expiration, or enabled/disabled toggle in Console sent the parent’s current policy text as newPolicy, turning sa-policy-type from inherited-policy into embedded-policy. Later policy grants added to the parent user or parent groups silently failed to apply to that key.
• Inability to disable inherited keys under > 4 KiB parent policies: Service-account inline session policies are capped at maxSVCSessionPolicySize = 4096 compacted bytes (because they live inside the JWT SessionToken), whereas parent user/group combined policies have no 4 KiB ceiling. Whenever a parent user had more than 4 KiB of combined policy statements, clicking Save in Console to disable an inherited service account sent the oversized parent policy as newPolicy, failed on the server with 400 session policy size exceeds 4KiB limit, and—because the modal lacked an inline error alert—left the key enabled without telling the operator why Save failed.

2. Impact Scope

3. Solution Design: Why It Is Necessary and Sufficient

Server Repairs (1d714834c)

1. Exact state restoration in importIAM (cmd/admin-handlers-users.go):
   • Passes status: svcAcctReq.Status in newServiceAccountOpts (defaulting to AccountOn only when an older or handcrafted JSON omits accountStatus), preserving "off" credentials in both .minio.sys/iam/ and etcd.
   • Calls globalIAMSys.SetGroupStatus(ctx, grp, false) whenever strings.EqualFold(grpInfo.Status, statusDisabled) after AddUsersToGroup succeeds, and records Error: gerr (or the status error) in failed.Groups.
2. Version normalization at credential write boundaries (normalizeServiceAccountPolicy in cmd/iam.go):
   • Clones any non-empty sessionPolicy whose Version is "" and sets Version = policy.DefaultVersion ("2012-10-17") before storing or updating the credential, while leaving empty policy documents (Version == "" and len(Statements) == 0) untouched as the explicit reset-to-inheritance signal established in SN-2026-021.

Console Repairs (1be8a74bf, a1a84cab4, 1fdb279fd)

1. Separate impliedPolicy state from inline editor text (EditServiceAccount.tsx, api/users.go):
   • When Restrict beyond user policy remains off on an inherited-policy key, Console omits policy from the PUT payload, preserving inheritance across name, description, expiry, and status edits regardless of parent policy size (even > 4 KiB).
   • When an operator turns Restrict beyond user policy off on an existing embedded-policy key (or enters {} / {"Statement":[]}), Console sends {} to explicitly reset the key back to inherited-policy.
   • If Restrict beyond user policy is toggled on while the editor is blank, Console blocks submission with clear inline validation instead of sending an ambiguous empty string; backend errors (such as invalid JSON/ARN or > 4 KiB inline policy) render inside the modal via ModalErrorAlert.

Sufficiency and Necessity

• Necessary: Fixing only SN-2026-021 on the server could not prevent Console from sending a 3 KiB parent policy string as newPolicy (because to the server, a valid non-empty JSON policy in newPolicy is indistinguishable from an intentional inline restriction), nor could it prevent importIAM from dropping svcAcctReq.Status and grpInfo.Status.
• Sufficient: Together with SN-2026-021 and mcli d7262c2a, the tri-state policy contract (omitted/null = preserve, {} / {"Statement":[]} = reset to inherited, non-empty = embed with normalized Version) and status fidelity hold uniformly across Server Admin APIs, site replication, IAM export/import, Console, and mcli (cmd/iam-import-state_test.go, cmd/iam-svcacct-policy-edit_test.go).

4. Trade-Offs, Caveats, and Operational Costs

Remediation and Audit Guidance

1. Upgrade SILO Server, SILO Console 2.7.1, and mcli 20261112 together when the post-20261109 Server release is published (Server main: 1d714834c, 34ba7cc1f; standalone Console v2.7.1: 3825ebc44; mcli 20261112: a37a9f05).
2. Audit clusters populated or restored via mcli admin cluster iam import: If you previously ran iam import from an export bundle containing disabled service accounts or disabled groups, inspect svcaccts.json and groups.json in that archive and re-disable any unintended active entries:

   mcli admin user svcacct disable myminio/ <access-key>
   mcli admin group disable myminio <group-name>

3. Audit Console-edited access keys for unintended embedded policies: If an access key was meant to track its parent user’s policies dynamically (Policy: implied) but was previously edited in Console, check mcli admin user svcacct info myminio/ <access-key> and reset it to inheritance if needed by toggling off Restrict beyond user policy in the updated Console (or passing {} to mcli admin user svcacct edit --policy).

See the Security Advisory Ledger, SN-2026-021, and Console Compatibility Notes.