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Basic JWT example

Secure access to routes with a basic JWT example. For more information about JWTs, see the JWT overview and API docs.

For examples that select destinations or east-west service mesh routes, see the Gloo Mesh Enterprise docs.

If you import or export resources across workspaces, your policies might not apply. For more information, see Import and export policies.

Before you begin

This guide assumes that you use the same names for components like clusters, workspaces, and namespaces as in the getting started, and that your Kubernetes context is set to the cluster you store your Gloo config in (typically the management cluster). If you have different names, make sure to update the sample configuration files in this guide.

Follow the getting started instructions to:

  1. Set up Gloo Gateway in a single cluster.
  2. Deploy sample apps.
  3. Configure an HTTP listener on your gateway and set up basic routing for the sample apps.

Configure JWT policies

You can apply a JWT policy at the destination or route level, but you cannot apply multiple JWT policies to the same destination or to the same route in a route table. If you try to apply multiple policies, only the policy that you created first takes effect. In general, you apply policies to routes to protect ingress traffic through the gateway, and to destinations to protect traffic within the service mesh. For more information, see Applying policies.

The following example is for a basic JWT policy with a local JWT issuer and inline public key. The policy does the following:

Review the following table to understand this configuration. For more information, see the API docs.

Setting Description
applyToRoutes Use labels to configure which routes to apply the policy to. This example label matches the app and route from the example route table that you apply separately. If omitted and you do not have another selector such as applyToDestinations, the policy applies to all routes in the workspace.
phase Set when to apply the JWT filter in the request chain, either before (preAuthz) or after (postAuthz) authorization to have access to the JWT token. You can also set the priority if you have multiple policies in the same phase. The lowest numbered priority is run first. For more information, see Phase considerations. This example sets no priority, so the default value of zero is used.
providers Set up the JWT providers for the policy. You can name the providers to help you map the provider when viewing logs to debug. However, the provider name does not affect the policy's behavior and cannot be used by other resources to select the policy. In this example, only one provider is set up, with the name dev-example. For an example with more than one provider, see Multiple JWT providers.
claimsToHeaders Optionally set the claims from the JWT payload that you want to extract and add as headers to the request before the request is forwarded to the upstream destination. This example extracts one claim and adds it as a header.
claimsToHeaders.append Enter a boolean value to add a claim's value if the header exists in the request. Use true to append the claim's value to the header, and false to overwrite any existing value in the header.
claimsToHeaders.claim Enter the name of the claim in the JWT payload to get the value for the header. In this example, the claim is org.
claimsToHeaders.header Enter the request header that the value of the claim is copied to. In this example, the header is x-org.
issuer Optionally, set the JWT issuer, usually as a URL or email address. If set, the iss field in the JWT token must match this field, or else the request is denied. If unset, the iss field in the JWT token is not checked. In this example, the issuer is an internal developer portal, https://dev-example.com.
local Provide the PEM-formatted public key to verify the JWT token. In this example, the public key is written inline to the policy for testing purposes. For production scenarios, you can set a remote reference to your JSON Web Key Set (JWKS) server instead of this local setting.
tokenSource Specify where Gloo Gateway looks for the token to use for JWT authentication. If unset, the default locations are tried in the following order:
  1. The authorization header X-Auth with the value Bearer <token>.
  2. The query parameter for access_token, such as https://<path>?access_token=<token>.
You can set up multiple JWT tokens to verify per request. If a request has multiple header and query parameters, all tokens must be valid for Gloo Gateway to accept the request.
tokenSource.headers Specify the header to get the JWT from. By default, Gloo Gateway uses the authorization header X-Auth and expects a value with a prefix of Bearer <token>. In this example, the header and prefix are explicitly set to the default values, X-Auth and 'Bearer '.
tokenSource.queryParameters Specify a query parameter to get the token from. The default value is access_token. This example uses a different query parameter, auth_token.

Try out JWT policies

To verify that the JWT policy protects your route, you must have a JWT and a set of keys to validate the JWT. Choose from the following options:

Use sample keys and JWT

For quick testing, you can use sample keys and a dev-example JWT. For more details about the sample JWT, see the GitHub readme.

  1. Apply the JWT policy. For more information about this policy, see the configuration example.

    kubectl apply -f https://gist.githubusercontent.com/artberger/674bab05350c9a048303cc7daaffe730/raw/daf7d9b64e5e9ecf309f17123e01f5a6cbb6c7eb/jwt-policy-basic.yaml

  2. Send a request to the httpbin app without any authentication. Notice that your request is denied with a 401 error. 

    curl -vik -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:80:${INGRESS_GW_IP} http://www.example.com:80/get

    curl -vik -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:443:${INGRESS_GW_IP} https://www.example.com:443/get
    Example output:

    HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
www-authenticate: Bearer realm="http://www.example.com/get"
...
Jwt is missing

  3. Get a sample JWT that is preconfigured to meet the validation requirements that you set in the JWT policy for the dev-example provider.

    TOKEN=$(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-gateway/jwt/dev-example.jwt -s) && echo "$TOKEN" | cut -d '.' -f2 - | base64 --decode -

    Example output:

    {"iss":"https://dev.example.com","exp":4804324736,"iat":1648651136,"org":"internal","email":"dev1@solo.io","group":"engineering","scope":"is:developer%

  4. Try the request to the httpbin app again, this time with your JWT token. Notice that your request is now accepted! 

    curl -vik -H "X-Auth: Bearer ${TOKEN}" -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:80:${INGRESS_GW_IP} http://www.example.com:80/get

    curl -vik -H "X-Auth: Bearer ${TOKEN}" -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:443:${INGRESS_GW_IP} https://www.example.com:443/get
    In the example output you get back a 200 response. You also can see the X-Email and X-Org headers that you appended in the claimsToHeaders section of the policy.

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
...
{
  "args": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Host": "www.example.com", 
    "X-Email": "dev1@solo.io", 
    "X-Envoy-Attempt-Count": "1", 
    "X-Envoy-Decorator-Operation": "httpbin.default.svc.cluster.local:8000/*", 
    "X-Envoy-Internal": "true", 
    "X-Httpbin": "true", 
    "X-Org": "internal"
  },

  5. Optional: Clean up the resources that you created.

    kubectl delete jwtpolicy -n httpbin jwt-policy

Create your own keys and JWT

To learn more about the basics, you can walk through steps to create your own private-public key pair with OpenSSL. Then, you use jwt.io to configure a JWT.

  1. Save the example JWT policy for the httpbin route. For more information about this policy, see the configuration example.

    wget -L https://gist.githubusercontent.com/artberger/674bab05350c9a048303cc7daaffe730/raw/daf7d9b64e5e9ecf309f17123e01f5a6cbb6c7eb/jwt-policy-basic.yaml

  2. Create a private-public key pair by using OpenSSL. You use this pair to create your own JWT token.

    1. Create a private key to sign the JWT. 
      openssl genrsa 2048 > private-key.pem
    2. Extract the public key from the private key. 
      openssl rsa -in private-key.pem -pubout

  3. Open the downloaded JWT policy.

    open jwt-policy_basic.yaml

  4. In the inline section, copy in the public key value from the output of the previous step, including the BEGIN/END parts. Make sure the indentation is kept.

  5. Create the JWT policy with your new public key value, which is used to verify the JWT token in subsequent requests.

    kubectl apply -f jwt-policy_basic.yaml

  6. Create a JWT that uses your private key. Refer to the following image to help understand the UI location of the steps. JWT token

    1. In your browser, go to https://jwt.io/. For the subsequent steps, you can refer to the following image.
    2. From the Algorithm dropdown, select RS256.
    3. From the Decoded section, scroll to the Payload: Data pane. Replace the content by pasting the following JWT payload information. 
      {
  "iss": "https://dev.example.com",
  "exp": 4804324736,
  "iat": 1648651136,
  "org": "internal",
  "email": "dev1@solo.io",
  "group": "engineering",
  "scope": "is:developer"
}
    4. From the Decoded section, scroll to the Verify Signature pane. In the first input box for -----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----, replace the content by pasting the value of your public key from the previous output of your terminal.
    5. In your terminal, copy the contents of your private key. 
      cat private-key.pem | pbcopy
    6. Return to your browser and go to the Verify Signature pane in the Decoded section. In the second input box for -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----, replace the content by pasting the value of your private key.
    7. Optional: Click Share JWT and paste the JWT values into a file to refer to later.
    8. From the Encoded section, copy the token value to your clipboard, such as eyJhbG.....
    9. Add the token value to an environment variable on your local machine. 
      export TOKEN="Bearer <token_value>"

  7. Send a request to the httpbin app without any authentication. Notice that your request is denied with a 401 error. 

    curl -vik -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:80:${INGRESS_GW_IP} http://www.example.com:80/get

    curl -vik -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:443:${INGRESS_GW_IP} https://www.example.com:443/get
    Example output:

    HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
www-authenticate: Bearer realm="http://www.example.com/get"
...
Jwt is missing

  8. Try the request to the httpbin app again, this time with your JWT token. Notice that your request is now accepted! 

    curl -vik -H "X-Auth: ${TOKEN}" -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:80:${INGRESS_GW_IP} http://www.example.com:80/get

    curl -vik -H "X-Auth: ${TOKEN}" -H "X-httpbin: true" --resolve www.example.com:443:${INGRESS_GW_IP} https://www.example.com:443/get
    In the example output you get back a 200 response. You also can see the X-Email and X-Org headers that you appended in the claimsToHeaders section of the policy.

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
...
{
  "args": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Host": "www.example.com", 
    "X-Email": "dev1@solo.io", 
    "X-Envoy-Attempt-Count": "1", 
    "X-Envoy-Decorator-Operation": "httpbin.default.svc.cluster.local:8000/*", 
    "X-Envoy-Internal": "true", 
    "X-Httpbin": "true", 
    "X-Org": "internal"
  },

  9. Optional: Clean up the resources that you created.

    kubectl delete jwtpolicy -n httpbin jwt-policy