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nginx-dlg-auth

NGINX module for delegating authentication and authorization to an HTTP gateway.

nginx-dlg-auth combines Hawk and iron to enable authentication and authorization using encapsulated tokens.

The token format has been inspired by Oz but is different for now, because in the long run, I think I have somewhat different use cases than Oz is aiming at.

This is all somewhat experimental and will evolve over the next months.

The token format right now is

{"client":"test01","pwd":"v8(9D1A>7n9J<","scope":["NEWS","BLOG"],\
"rw":false,"exp":1405688331,"hawkAlgorithm":"sha256"}

and combines password and algorithm to be used with Hawk as well as access rights and token expiration time.

Status

The module has been used in a production environment for several months and version 1.5 fixes some minor security issues.

Installation

This NGINX module needs ciron and hawkc. Build them separately and adjust nginx-dlg-auth's config file to point to libciron.a and libhawkc.a.

Also, copy the header files ciron.h and hawkc.h to a standard header file location on your machine.

Configure NGINX build like this:

./configure --add-module=/path/to/code/nginx-dlg-auth

You may also want to add the library file to $LINK_DEPS to make sure nginx will correctly relink itself on make if library changes."

NGINX Module Configuration

dlg_auth <realm>

dlg_auth_iron_pwd <password>  OR <passwordID> <password>

dlg_auth_allowed_clock_skew <allowed-skew-in-seconds>

dlg_auth_host <hostname>

dlg_auth_port <port>

dlg_auth

Enables access delegation checking. The parameter is the authentication realm. Tickets must inlcude this realm in their scope to gain access.

If dlg_auth is missing or if realm is 'off', the module will not be enabled. The 'off' value can be used to disable authentication checking in locations that have parent locations that enable checking.

dlg_auth_iron_pwd

You can use dlg_auth_iron_pwd to either set a single password, or to provide a set of passwordIds and password to enable password rotation.

dlg_auth_allowed_clock_skew

Explicitly set the allowed clock skew in seconds. The default is 1 second.

If you set this to 0 clock skew will not be checed. This is useful for monitoring checks.

dlg_auth_host <hostname>

Explicitly set the host used for signature validation.

dlg_auth_port <port>

Explicitly set the port used for signature validation.

Examples

dlg_auth NEWS
dlg_auth_iron_pwd z3$0O1Y]8x3T+;
dlg_auth_allowed_clock_skew 10



dlg_auth NEWS
dlg_auth_iron_pwd 100922 z3$0O1Y]8x3T+;
dlg_auth_iron_pwd 776277 w1|6Q3V]7s8R);
dlg_auth_iron_pwd 199289 i7(5P3D.4f0D-;
dlg_auth_iron_pwd 662552 a6>0K0G]8z7B=;
dlg_auth_allowed_clock_skew 10

You must not use passwords that contain ';' characters. This would probably confuse nginx config parser.

Variables

The module sets a number of variables to make per request handling information available in later NGINX phases. For example, these variables can be used for logging which client (and/or user) made the request and, possibly, for which resource owner the pertaining grant had been issued.

These variables are available: