Week 148 – Intermediate

This week’s challenge puts the spotlight on secure, key-pair authentication in Snowflake using Snowpark including seamless rotation.

Snowflake continues to elevate its security offerings, and key-pair authentication is now a strong recommendation for service users. It eliminates the need for passwords, enhances automation, and aligns with modern best practices. But what if the private key needs replacement? Day-to-day operations shouldn’t be interrupted, and that’s where seamless key rotation comes in.

In this challenge, you’ll:

• Rotate your key-pair on-the-fly—without breaking your connection or workflow.

• Set up a service-style user (demo_user) with RSA key-pair authentication,

• Connect confidently via Snowpark in Python,

Your steps to follow :
1. Create a demo user

2. Generate an RSA key pair (public first , then private)

3. Link the public key to the Snowflake user

4. Grant minimal access needed for the challenge

5. Connect via Python using Snowpark and authenticate with the private key

from snowflake.snowpark import Session


# Set up the session for demo_user with RSA private key authentication
private_key_file = '<location of private key>'

connection_parameters = {
    'account': "<put your account identifier here>",
    'user': "demo_user",
    'warehouse': "compute_wh",
    'private_key_file': private_key_file
}

session = Session.builder.configs(connection_parameters).create()
# Check
result = session.sql('select current_user();').collect()
print(result)

7. Generate a secondary RSA key pair (public first , then private)

8. Link the secondary public key to the Snowflake user without removing the first one

9. Authenticate using the secondary key

from snowflake.snowpark import Session


# Set up the session for demo_user with RSA private key authentication
secondary_private_key_file = '<location of the second private key>'

connection_parameters = {
    'account': "<put your account identifier here>",
    'user': "demo_user",
    'warehouse': "compute_wh",
    'private_key_file': secondary_private_key_file
}

session = Session.builder.configs(connection_parameters).create()
# Check
result = session.sql('select current_user();').collect()
print(result)

10. Don’t forget to post your code!