Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
140 lines (114 loc) · 6.42 KB

TECHNICAL.md

File metadata and controls

140 lines (114 loc) · 6.42 KB

nginx-sso - Design document

This document details the technical architecture and reasoning behind the nginx-sso system.

The request flow

+--------------+  User / Pass
| (nginx)      |  <----------+
| ssologin     |   SSO Cookie    User
| ECC PrivKey  |  +---------->
+--------------+    Step 1+2     +
login.domain.dev                 | SSO Cookie
                                 | Step 3
  Step 9      Step 8             v           Step 4+7    Step 5+6 
+---------+ <-----------  +---------------+ ---------> +------------+
| Service |  Remote-User  |  nginx        |  Cookie    | ssoauth    |
+---------+  Remote-Group |  auth_request | <--------- | ECC PubKey |
                          +---------------+  Username  | ACL        |
                           auth.domain.dev   Groups    +------------+
  1. The user performs a login at the ssologin tool resource on login.domain.dev.
  2. The ssologin returns the encoded sso cookie to the user.
  3. The user makes a request for a protected resource on auth.domain.dev.
  4. nginx performs a subrequest to the ssoauth backend, containing the headers of the original request.
  5. The ssoauth backend decodes and verifies the cookie.
  6. The ssoauth backend queries its ACL about whether the user can access this specific resource.
  7. On success, the ssoauth backend sets the response headers in response to the subrequest.
  8. nginx takes the response headers of the subrequest and forwards them to the service application.
  9. The service application can use the Remote-User / Remote-Group header as-is.

The sso cookie

nginx-sso is a single-sign-on system for HTTP which is based on cookies and ECDSA signatures. The centerpiece of nginx-sso is the 'sso' cookie which looks like this:

sso: { Payload: { username, groups}, Expiry, R, S (ECDSA sig) }

or to put it in types:

sso: { P: { U: string, G: string }, E: int, R: bignum, S: bignum }

The cookie contains some payload (in our case a username and a groups string), an expiry and an ECDSA signature over the payload, the expiry and the IP of client. The receiver can thereby verify that the content of the payload has not been modified, that the cookie has not expired and that the IP of the client didn't change.

The cookie payload is serialized into JSON and URL-escaped to be stored as an actual cookie. It is created by the ssologin tool once a user has successfully identified himself and will be set for a common domain.

Only the ssologin tool will need to be in possession of the corresponding ECC private key. This way, even if an application server is compromised, it can not be used to issue false sso cookies.

The nginx auth request endpoint

nginx has a number of builtin authentication modules. The auth_request module makes the decision of allowing a request for resource by issuing its own subrequest to a specified resource ("auth endpoint"). The auth endpoint can either reply with a HTTP 200 (OK) or it can issue a HTTP 401/403 (Unauthenticated / Unauthorized).

Our endpoint is called ssoauth, and for performance-reasons it should run on the same hosts as the nginx instance. To make the decision (accept/deny), the auth endpoint can retrieve the details of the original request to nginx from different (custom) headers: X-Original-Uri (the URI which was requested), X-Real-Ip (the original IP) plus any headers that were part of the original request (including the sso cookie). The auth_request module does not need to forward the body of the original request, only its headers.

When the auth endpoint replies to nginx, it can do so with its own headers. These can be copied and then passed on to whatever proxied backend is protected by the auth_request module in the first place. In our case, the ssoauth backend will reply with the headers Remote-User, Remote-Groups and Remote-Expiry if authentication was successful.

Authentication for backend applications

ssoauth offers authentication by verifying the sso cookie with a supplied ECC public key and, if successful, returning the username, groups and expiry time to the nginx server. If these headers are copied and passed on to a backend (via the proxy statement), the backend can thus make use of these headers to identify the user. Authentication logic becomes much easier this way since your application no longer needs to deal with sessions, expiry, passwords, groups, etc. All it needs is a mapping of username (or group affiliations) to permissions.

Authorization

ssoauth also implements mandatory authorization logic in the form of an ACL. This ACL is a structure which contains a list of permitted users and groups for each vhost and any number of URI prefixes for these vhosts. This way, you can even protect "dumb" resources (static websites etc) with nginx-sso. If a vhost has a URI prefix section, the usernames / groups in this section will override the global vhost configuration for this prefix.

Benefits

  • golang, simple deploys (one static binary, config and pubkey for services)
  • Few "moving parts" (e.g. no interconnectivity between services and IdP)
  • Works with stock nginx (no out-of-tree patches or lua modules)
  • Safe default (ssoauth breaks -> authentication fails)
  • The simplest way to provide SSO to different applications (via HTTP headers)

Limitations

  • Revocation of an active session is not possible unless you were to blacklist the user at each service.
  • Inclusion of additional user attributes will result in the cookie growing.
  • nginx-sso will only work across the same domain due to the cookie.
  • Performance might be a concern.
  • Setup might seem complex, but is relatively straightforward compared to similar systems.

Similar software

Resources