JWT for mesh routes
Secure access to service mesh routes with a basic JWT example.
For more information about JWTs, see the JWT overview and API docs. For an example that selects your destinations, instead of the routes to the destinations, see JWT for destinations.
Before you begin
This guide assumes that you use the same names for components like clusters, workspaces, and namespaces as in the getting started. If you have different names, make sure to update the sample configuration files in this guide.
Complete the multicluster getting started guide to set up the following testing environment.
- Three clusters along with environment variables for the clusters and their Kubernetes contexts.
- The Gloo
meshctl
CLI, along with other CLI tools such askubectl
andistioctl
. - The Gloo management server in the management cluster, and the Gloo agents in the workload clusters.
- Istio installed in the workload clusters.
- A simple Gloo workspace setup.
- Install Bookinfo and other sample apps.
2.5 only: Upgrade your Gloo Helm release to set the
EnableJWTPolicyEastWestRoute
feature gate totrue
. For more information the impact of enabling this feature gate, see the release notes.
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:
- Enables JWT authentication for the selected destinations.
- Adds the value of an
org
claim from the JWT payload to anX-Org
header in the request, if present. - Adds the value of an
email
claim from the JWT payload to anX-Email
header in the request, if present. - Checks requests by using the token found in the
X-Auth
header with the prefixBearer <token>
, or in a query parameterauth_token=<token>
. Note that if a request has both the header and query parameter, both tokens must be valid for Gloo Mesh Enterprise to accept the request.
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 Mesh Enterprise looks for the token to use for JWT authentication. If unset, the default locations are tried in the following order:
|
tokenSource.headers | Specify the header to get the JWT from. By default, Gloo Mesh Enterprise 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 destination, you must have a JWT and a set of keys to validate the JWT. The following example uses a sample provided for you in GitHub. For more details about the sample JWT, see the GitHub readme. You can adapt other guides to create your own keys and JWT or use a remote JWKS with keys from an OIDC provider.
Create a route table that defines the east-west service mesh routes to your backing destinations.
kubectl apply --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1 -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2 kind: RouteTable metadata: annotations: cluster.solo.io/cluster: "" name: www-example-com namespace: httpbin labels: route: httpbin spec: hosts: - www.example.com workloadSelectors: - {} http: - name: httpbin-mesh labels: route: httpbin matchers: - headers: - name: X-httpbin-mesh forwardTo: destinations: - port: number: 8000 ref: name: httpbin namespace: httpbin EOF
Review the following table to understand this configuration. For more information, see the API docs.
Setting Description hosts
The host domain that requests are routed for. For example, workloads within your service mesh can send a request to this http://www.example.com
host instead of directly to the other destination, such ashttp://httpbin.httpbin:8000/
.workloadSelectors
The workloads within your service mesh that can have their requests routed through this route table. By selecting all workloads ( {}
), any workload in the service mesh can use these routes.http
The HTTP route that this route table sets up. In this example: name
: The route has the namehttpbin-mesh
so that you can easily identify this route as an east-west route within the service mesh.labels
: The route has the labelroute: httpbin
that you can use in your JWT policy to select this route.matchers
: The route matches requests on the host that include theX-httpbin-mesh
header.forwardTo
: Requests along the matching path are sent to thehttpbin
Kubernetes service destination.
virtualGateway
This value is omitted. This way, the route table does not select a virtual gateway, which you only need for ingress traffic. For more information about using route selectors in JWT policies for both east-west and ingress routes, see Routes for ingress or service mesh traffic. Apply the JWT policy to the east-west routes that you just defined. 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
Send a request to the
httpbin
app without any authentication. Notice that your request is denied with a401
error.Example output:
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized www-authenticate: Bearer realm="http://www.example.com/get" ... Jwt is missing
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%
Copy the value of the sample JWT to paste into the curl command in the next step.
echo $TOKEN
Example truncated output to copy:
eyJhbGciOiJSUzI...
Try the request to the
In the example output you get back ahttpbin
app again. Replace the<$TOKEN>
in the?auth_token=
query parameter with the JWT value that you copied in the previous step. Notice that your request is now accepted!200
response. You also can see theX-Email
andX-Org
headers that you appended in theclaimsToHeaders
section of the policy.HTTP/1.1 200 OK ... { "args": {}, "headers": { "Accept": [ "*/*" ], "Host": [ "www.example.com/get" ], "X-Email": [ "dev1@solo.io" ], "X-Org": [ "internal" ], ...
- You can optionally remove the resources that you set up as part of this guide.
kubectl delete RouteTable -n httpbin www-example-com kubectl delete JwtPolicy -n httpbin jwt-policy