ACL-based authorization in Kafka - Mini Project: Build & Apply

ACL-based Authorization in Kafka

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a Kafka cluster where different users have specific permissions to access topics. To keep the data safe, you will create Access Control Lists (ACLs) that allow or deny users certain actions on Kafka topics.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Kafka ACL configuration that grants a user permission to read from a topic and denies another user from writing to the same topic.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Kafka topic named orders

Create an ACL that allows user alice to read from the orders topic

Create an ACL that denies user bob from writing to the orders topic

Verify the ACLs by listing them

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Kafka ACLs help secure data streams by controlling who can read or write to topics, protecting sensitive information.

💼 Career

Understanding Kafka ACLs is important for roles like DevOps engineers, Kafka administrators, and backend developers working with secure data pipelines.

1

Create the Kafka topic orders

Use the Kafka CLI command to create a topic named orders with 1 partition and a replication factor of 1.

Kafka

# Use kafka-topics.sh to create the topic 'orders'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-topics.sh --create with the right options to create the topic.

2

Create an ACL to allow user alice to read from orders

Use the Kafka CLI command to add an ACL that allows the user alice to perform the READ operation on the orders topic.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic orders --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1 --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
# Add ACL to allow alice to READ from orders
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-acls.sh --add with --allow-principal User:alice and --operation READ.

3

Create an ACL to deny user bob from writing to orders

Use the Kafka CLI command to add an ACL that denies the user bob the WRITE operation on the orders topic.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic orders --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1 --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
kafka-acls.sh --add --allow-principal User:alice --operation READ --topic orders --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
# Add ACL to deny bob WRITE access to orders
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-acls.sh --add --deny-principal User:bob with --operation WRITE.

4

List all ACLs for the orders topic

Use the Kafka CLI command to list all ACLs for the orders topic to verify the permissions.

Kafka

kafka-topics.sh --create --topic orders --partitions 1 --replication-factor 1 --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
kafka-acls.sh --add --allow-principal User:alice --operation READ --topic orders --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
kafka-acls.sh --add --deny-principal User:bob --operation WRITE --topic orders --bootstrap-server localhost:9092
# List ACLs for topic orders
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use kafka-acls.sh --list --topic orders to see the ACLs.