Version: 7.x-38.0.0
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HTTP-header/Proxy based authentication

This module is deprecated and will be replaced by the new Proxy Authentication 2 module in Search Guard 8. The new proxy module is fully backwards-compatible but offers a broader range of features.

You might already have a single sign on (SSO) authentication solution in place, and you want to use this instead of the Search Guard authentication backend.

Most of these solutions work as a proxy in front of Elasticsearch/Search Guard. Usually the request is routed to the SSO proxy first. The SSO proxy authenticates the user. If authentication succeeds, the (verified) username and its (verified) roles are set in HTTP header fields. The names of these fields are dependant on the SSO solution you have in place.

Search Guard can extract these HTTP header fields from the request, and use these values to determine the permissions a user has.

Configuration

Enabling proxy detection

To enable proxy detection, configure it in the xff section of sg_config.yml:

---
_sg_meta:
  type: "config"
  config_version: 2

sg_config:
  dynamic:
    http:
      xff:
        enabled: true
        remoteIpHeader: 'x-forwarded-for'
        internalProxies: '192\.168\.0\.11|192\.168\.0\.12'

You can configure the following settings:

Name Description
searchguard.dynamic.http.xff.enabled Boolean, Enable or disable proxy support. Default: false
searchguard.dynamic.http.xff.internalProxies A regular expression containing the IP addresses of all trusted proxies.
searchguard.dynamic.http.xff.remoteIpHeader String, name of the HTTP header field where the chain of hostnames are stored. Default: x-forwarded-for

In order to determine if a request comes from a trusted internal proxy, Search Guard compares the remote address of the HTTP request with the list of configured internal proxies. If the remote address is not in the list of trusted proxies, it is treated like a client request. Proxy authentication will not work in this case.

Enabling proxy authentication

The names of the respective HTTP header fields which carry the authenticated username and role(s) can be configured in in the proxy HTTP authenticator section:

proxy_auth_domain:
  http_enabled: true
  order: 1
  http_authenticator:
    type: proxy
    challenge: false
    config:
      user_header: "x-proxy-user"
      roles_header: "x-proxy-roles"
  authentication_backend:
    type: noop
Name Description
user_header String, The HTTP header field containing the authenticated username. Default: x-proxy-user
roles_header String, The HTTP header field containing the comma separated list of authenticated role names. Roles found in this header field will be used as backend roles and can be used to map the user to Search Guard roles. Default: x-proxy-roles
roles_separator String, the separator for roles. Default: “,”

Example

In the following example we run an nginx proxy in front of a 3-node Elasticsearch cluster. For the sake of simplicity we use hardcoded values for x-proxy-user and x-proxy-roles. In a real world example you would set these headers dynamically.

events {
  worker_connections  1024;
}

http {

  upstream elasticsearch {
    server sgssl-0.example.com:9200;
    server sgssl-1.example.com:9200;
    server sgssl-2.example.com:9200;
    keepalive 15;
  }

  server {
    listen       8090;
    server_name  nginx.example.com;

    location / {
      proxy_pass https://elasticsearch;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header x-proxy-user admin;
      proxy_set_header x-proxy-roles admin;
    }
  }

}

The corresponding minimal sg_config.yml looks like:

_sg_meta:
  type: "config"
  config_version: 2

sg_config:
  dynamic:
    http:
      xff:
        enabled: true
        internalProxies: '172.16.0.203' # nginx proxy
    authc:
      proxy_auth_domain:
        http_enabled: true
        transport_enabled: true
        order: 0
        http_authenticator:
          type: proxy
          challenge: false
          config:
            user_header: "x-proxy-user"
            roles_header: "x-proxy-roles"
        authentication_backend:
          type: noop

The important part is to enable the X-Forwarded-For (XFF) resolution and to set the IP(s) of the internal proxies correctly:

enabled: true
internalProxies: '172.16.0.203' # nginx proxy

In our case, nginx.example.com runs on 172.16.0.203, so we need to add this IP to the list of internal proxies.

Make sure to set the internalProxies correctly, so only requests from trusted IPs are accepted.

Kibana proxy authentication

If you plan to use proxy authentication with Kibana, the most common setup is to place an authenticating proxy in front of Kibana, and let Kibana pass the user and role header to Search Guard:

Authentication Proxy -> Kibana -> Search Guard

In this case the remote address of the HTTP call is the IP of Kibana, because it sits directly in front of Search Guard. Therefore you need to add the IP of Kibana to the list of internal proxies:

_sg_meta:
  type: "config"
  config_version: 2

sg_config:
  dynamic:
    http:
      xff:
        enabled: true
        remoteIpHeader: 'x-forwarded-for'
        internalProxies: '<Kibana IP>'

To activate proxy authentication in Kibana, add the following line to kibana.yml:

searchguard.auth.type: "proxy"

To pass the user and role headers that the authenticating proxy adds from Kibana to Search Guard, you need to add them to the HTTP header whitelist in kibana.yml:

elasticsearch.requestHeadersWhitelist: ["authorization", "sgtenant", "x-proxy-user", "x-proxy-roles"]



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