dex/Documentation/authproxy.md

Authenticating proxy

NOTE: This connector is experimental and may change in the future.

Overview

The authproxy connector returns identities based on authentication which your front-end web server performs. Dex consumes the X-Remote-User header set by the proxy, which is then used as the user's email address.

The proxy MUST remove any X-Remote-* headers set by the client, for any URL path, before the request is forwarded to dex.

The connector does not support refresh tokens or groups.

Configuration

The authproxy connector is used by proxies to implement login strategies not supported by dex. For example, a proxy could handle a different OAuth2 strategy such as Slack. The connector takes no configuration other than a name and id:

connectors:
# Slack login implemented by an authenticating proxy, not by dex.
- type: authproxy
  id: slack
  name: Slack 

The proxy only needs to authenticate the user when they attempt to visit the callback URL path:

( dex issuer URL )/callback/( connector id )?( url query )

For example, if dex is running at https://auth.example.com/dex and the connector ID is slack, the callback URL would look like:

https://auth.example.com/dex/callback/slack?state=xdg3z6quhrhwaueo5iysvliqf

The proxy should login the user then return them to the exact URL (inlucing the query), setting X-Remote-User to the user's email before proxying the request to dex.

Configuration example - Apache 2

The following is an example config file that can be used by the external connector to authenticate a user.

connectors:
- type: authproxy
  id: myBasicAuth
  name: HTTP Basic Auth

The authproxy connector assumes that you configured your front-end web server such that it performs authentication for the /dex/callback/myBasicAuth location and provides the result in the X-Remote-User HTTP header. The following configuration will work for Apache 2.4.10+:

<Location /dex/callback/myBasicAuth>
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "db.debian.org webPassword"
    AuthBasicProvider file
    AuthUserFile "/etc/apache2/debian-web-pw.htpasswd"
    Require valid-user

    # Defense in depth: clear the Authorization header so that
    # Debian Web Passwords never even reach dex.
    RequestHeader unset Authorization

    # Requires Apache 2.4.10+
    RequestHeader set X-Remote-User expr=%{REMOTE_USER}@debian.org

    ProxyPass "http://localhost:5556/dex/callback/myBasicAuth"
    ProxyPassReverse "http://localhost:5556/dex/callback/myBasicAuth"
</Location>

Full Apache2 setup

After installing your Linux distribution’s Apache2 package, place the following virtual host configuration in e.g. /etc/apache2/sites-available/sso.conf:

<VirtualHost sso.example.net>
    ServerName sso.example.net

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

    <Location /dex/>
        ProxyPass "http://localhost:5556/dex/"
        ProxyPassReverse "http://localhost:5556/dex/"
    </Location>

    <Location /dex/callback/myBasicAuth>
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName "db.debian.org webPassword"
        AuthBasicProvider file
        AuthUserFile "/etc/apache2/debian-web-pw.htpasswd"
        Require valid-user

        # Defense in depth: clear the Authorization header so that
        # Debian Web Passwords never even reach dex.
        RequestHeader unset Authorization

        # Requires Apache 2.4.10+
        RequestHeader set X-Remote-User expr=%{REMOTE_USER}@debian.org

        ProxyPass "http://localhost:5556/dex/callback/myBasicAuth"
        ProxyPassReverse "http://localhost:5556/dex/callback/myBasicAuth"
    </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Then, enable it using a2ensite sso.conf, followed by a restart of Apache2.