boundary/website/content/docs/concepts/security/permissions/assignable-permissions.mdx

---
layout: docs
page_title: Assignable Permissions
description: |-
  Assignable Permissions
---

## Assignable Permissions

Resources identified by the ID/Type selectors have permissions granted to the
user in the form of actions and visibility (via `output_fields`). Each of these
is detailed in the subsections below.

### Actions

Actions convey the ability to perform some action against a resource or
collection. Many of these are common CRUD actions (`create`, `read`, `update`,
`delete`) but many resources also specify actions specific to their type; for
instance, a `target` has an `authorize-session` action to allow you to request
making a connection to that target, and `auth-method` resources have an
`authenticate` action to allow you to authenticate to Boundary. For the most
part these are straightforward, however there are a couple of special cases to
know.

#### Subactions

Some subactions are supported. These actions have a format
`top_level_action:subaction`, such as `read:self`. Being granted the top level
action infers being granted all subactions. Thus, if a grant conveys `read`, it
also matches the API actions `read` and `read:self`. However, if a grant conveys
`read:self`, it will match the API action `read:self` but will not match `read`.

#### The `no-op` Action and Listing Visibility

There is an action that can be granted called `no-op`. As might be apparent,
`no-op` is not used for any real action in Boundary; the purpose of this action
is for listing visibility. Boundary only shows resources in the output of a
`list` action for which a user has at least one granted action. Thus, without
`no-op`, in order for a resource to be visible in a `list` action, a different
action such as `read` would have to be granted to a user. This could result in
exposing more information than desired, especially in the case of listing scopes
and authentication methods so that users can perform initial authentication to
Boundary (that is, granting access to `u_anon`).

By granting the `no-op` action to users, they can see the resources in the
output of a list command without needing other capability grants as well.

### Anonymous User Restrictions

Starting in Boundary 0.9.0, there are severe limits placed on the actions
allowed to be assigned to the anonymous user `u_anon`. This is meant to avoid
situations where an operator accidentally or mistakenly adds the anonymous user
to a role that provides more privileges than might be intended for
unauthenticated users.

The set of actions is currently restricted to listing scopes and auth methods
and authentication to auth methods (plus `no-op` actions for listing
visibility). If further use-cases arise from user feedback this list can be
expanded.

Note: there is no special error message returned when access is denied due to it
being disallowed to the anonymous user. It is still possible to assign grants to
a role on which the anonymous user is a principal that can never match the
anonymous user. In the future this may change, but trying to limit this
introduces other restrictions on reasonable administrative workflows so an
acceptable set of tradeoffs would need to be figured out.

### Output Fields

Grant strings can contain an `output_fields` field. This allows fine-grained
control over visibility of data returned to users.

In many cases, `output_fields` will not need to be set directly. However, an
example in the form of some history helps provide some context as to when this
might be useful.

In Boundary 0.2.0, we restricted the set of fields returned for some `list`
calls (those on the `scopes` and `auth-methods` collections) to a small set if
the user was the anonymous user `u_anon`. Although default behavior in Boundary
was to display all resource fields when listing, because the default was also to
allow anonymous access to perform `list` on scopes and auth methods (in order to
discover auth methods and then authenticate to them), returning all
configuration information for all scopes and auth methods felt like it was
publicly disclosing more information to users than might be desired.

At the same time, this was not an ideal solution for two reasons:

1. There is no one-size-fits-all security policy, and what we thought were
   reasonable defaults may not work in all situations

2. It made the scopes and auth methods listing behavior work differently from
   any other `list` action, which is not ideal

As a result, we decided to approach this problem the same way we normally try to
within Boundary: set resonable defaults, but give the administrator ultimate
control.

The resulting behavior is as follows: `output_fields` references the field names
of the JSON object response, composes just like other parts of the RBAC model,
and are action-specific. That is, a grant like:

`id=*;type=auth-methods;actions=list,no-op;output_fields=scope_id,name,description`

will, if all by itself, result in those three identified output fields applying
to `list` (and `no-op`) actions for all auth methods in the scope. Thus when
performing a `list`, each item returned will have only those three fields
populated. Any other actions (like `read` or `update`) are unaffected and will
use defaults.

A grant like:

`id=*;type=auth-methods;output_fields=id`

will, if all by itself, result in _any_ action against auth methods in the scope
having only `id` returned.

However, if both of the above grants are included, since grants are composable
the final set of output fields will be `id,scope_id,name,description` for `list`
(and `no-op`) actions, and `id` for all other actions.

If, after the grants are composed for a given request, none of the grants
applicable to the resource/action contain `output_fields` definitions, the
defaults are used. These defaults are implemented using internal values for
`output_fields` and vary based on whether the user is the anonymous user:

- If the user is the anonymous user, a useful but restricted set of fields is
  returned. This includes `id`, `scope_id`, `scope`, `name`, `description`, and a
  few more.

- If the user is any authenticated user, the full set of fields is returned

To think about it a different way, empty `output_fields`, after grant
composition, is equivalent to using Boundary's default; however the moment that
grants start specifying output fields, it is composed from an empty set and thus
nothing is contained unless explicitly specified. (An actual empty set is not
currently supported, as we don't perform validation on the values given.
However, this means setting `output_fields=none` is functionally equivalent!)