Ambassador Module - HTTP Basic Authentication

Reusable Ambassador Authentication Module that supports HTTP Basic Authentication and a username and password database.

Quick Start

NOTE: The quick start sets up a user database with a single user admin and password admin. Later on the README shows how to add and remove users from the database so you can customize for your own uses.

1. Install Ambassador if you have not already!

2. Add the the Authentication service to your Ambassador.

   Given (the original Ambassador service from Getting Started:

   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     labels:
       service: ambassador
     name: ambassador
     annotations:
       getambassador.io/config: |
         ---
         apiVersion: ambassador/v0
         kind:  Mapping
         name:  httpbin_mapping
         prefix: /httpbin/
         service: httpbin.org:80
         host_rewrite: httpbin.org
   spec:
     type: LoadBalancer
     ports:
       - name: ambassador
         port: 80
         targetPort: 80
     selector:
       service: ambassador
   

   Edit so afterwards it becomes:

   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     labels:
       service: ambassador
     name: ambassador
     annotations:
       getambassador.io/config: |
         ---
         apiVersion: ambassador/v0
         kind: AuthService
         name: authentication
         auth_service: "ambassador-auth:80"
         path_prefix: "/extauth"
         allowed_headers: []
         ---
         apiVersion: ambassador/v0
         kind:  Mapping
         name:  httpbin_mapping
         prefix: /httpbin/
         service: httpbin.org:80
         host_rewrite: httpbin.org
   spec:
     type: LoadBalancer
     ports:
       - name: ambassador
         port: 80
         targetPort: 80
     selector:
       service: ambassador
   

3. Install the Ambassador HTTP Basic Authentication module from this repository

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/datawire/ambassador-auth-httpbasic/master/manifests/ambassador-auth-httpbasic.yaml
   

4. Get the value of Ambassador's External IP (shown as __EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__ below)

   kubectl get svc ambassador -o wide
   
   NAME         TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP             PORT(S)        AGE       SELECTOR
   ambassador   LoadBalancer   100.67.255.49   __EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__   80:30818/TCP   3h        service=ambassador
   

5. Attempt to reach one of your services without authentication:

   curl -v http://__EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__/qotm/
   
   > GET /qotm/ HTTP/1.1
   > Host: __EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__
   > User-Agent: curl/7.55.1
   > Accept: */*
   
   < HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
   < server: envoy
   < date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 17:07:56 GMT
   * Authentication problem. Ignoring this.
   < www-authenticate: Basic realm="Authentication Required"
   < content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
   < content-length: 0
   < x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 305
   
   

6. Attempt to reach one of your services with authentication:

   curl -v -u admin:admin http://__EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__/qotm/
   
   > GET /qotm/ HTTP/1.1
   > Host: __EXTERNAL_IP_VALUE__
   > Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=
   > User-Agent: curl/7.55.1
   > Accept: */*
   
   < HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   < content-type: application/json
   < content-length: 172
   < server: envoy
   < date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 17:08:40 GMT
   < x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 98
   
   {
     "hostname": "qotm-58d5cb7699-hrp7p", 
     "ok": true, 
     "quote": "A late night does not make any sense.", 
     "time": "2018-03-20T17:08:40.556710", 
     "version": "1.1"
   }
   

Users Database

The file format for the users database is:

• A single UTF-8 encoded YAML document
• Each key in the YAML document is a plaintext username.
• Each value for a key is a YAML object with a single field named hashed_password.
• The value of hashed_password is a bcrypt encrypted Base64 representation of a SHA256 hashed password in hexadecimal representation. The complexity of this step is to support long passwords since bcrypt does not work for longer than 72 bytes of data.

An example is shown below:

admin:
  hashed_password: "$2b$12$2uSUm0tOHR.6.otAic0zZuHNLjH2TJ5fymD3GwDgEGJx6Mfqbcn/u"

user1:
  hashed_password: "$2b$12$BfyGWJEVpybci4ze7tpKuuWxlJ/aS1sFqQwuuxMC/X0ey9YkHxnr."

Manipulating the Users Database

1. You need to install a bcrypt tool or library. The Python implementation is recommended and can be installed with pip.

   pip install bcrypt
   

Add User

1. Prepare the password for bcrypt. In the below example we prepare the password hunter2 for use.

   export PREPARED_PASSWORD=$(printf "hunter2" | shasum -a 256 | head -c 64 | openssl base64 -A)
   

2. Encrypt the prepared password using bcrypt:

   printf "$PREPARED_PASSWORD" | python -c 'import bcrypt, sys; print(bcrypt.hashpw(sys.stdin.read().encode(), bcrypt.gensalt()).decode())'
   

3. Add a new entry to your users database.

   Given:

   user1:
     hashed_password: "$2b$12$BfyGWJEVpybci4ze7tpKuuWxlJ/aS1sFqQwuuxMC/X0ey9YkHxnr."
   

   Becomes:

   user1:
     hashed_password: "$2b$12$BfyGWJEVpybci4ze7tpKuuWxlJ/aS1sFqQwuuxMC/X0ey9YkHxnr."
   
   user2:
     hashed_password: "$2b$12$hcPac9pcaV5caK/TU.Oi8.8Y2eosUX6zCBEdPZSDhvl7HQ1IqbnDC"   
   

Remove User

1. Find the entry for a given username in the YAML document and delete it.

Update Kubernetes Secret

1. Kubernetes secrets contain a base64 data blob that contain the secret's payload. The YAML document needs to be base64 encoded.

   cat path/to/users.yaml | openssl base64 -A
   

2. Update the secret payload:

   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Secret
   metadata:
     name: ambassador-auth-httpbasic
   type: Opaque
   data:
     users.yaml: ${BASE64_ENCODED_USERS_DATA}
   

3. Update the secret:

   kubectl apply -f path/to/secret.yaml
   

4. Propagation of the change to all Pods running the authentication module takes about 30 seconds to a minute.

License

Licensed under Apache 2.0. Please read LICENSE for details.