Access policy

Control access for workloads in your service mesh.

For example, you might want to enforce a “zero trust” network model for all of your services. In your workspace settings, you can enable service isolation so that only services within the same workspace (or imported workspaces) can communicate with each other. For even more control, you can set up access policies. With access policies, you can deny all access to a specific destination except for the clients that you explicitly allow.

This guide shows you how to set up Gloo access policies to restrict incoming or outgoing traffic on Layer 4 for an endpoint to a specific port and protocol. For example, you can allow incoming TCP traffic on port 3000 only.

For more information, see the following resources.

• Gloo Mesh (Gloo Platform APIs) API docs
• Getting started guide for service isolation
• Istio docs for authorization policy

Before you begin

1. 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 as kubectl and istioctl.
   • 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.
2. Install Bookinfo and other sample apps.

Configure access policies

You can apply an access policy at the workload or destination level. For more information, see Applying policies.

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToWorkloads:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            account: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToDestinations:
  - port:
      number: 9080
    selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            account: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToDestinations:
  - port:
      number: 9080
    selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            account: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*
      match:
        request:
          headers:
            X-Test-Header:
              notValues:
              - noMatch
              - partial-blocked
              values:
              - match
              - partial*

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToWorkloads:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedIpBlocks:
      - 112.114.230.1
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToWorkloads:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
        labels:
          app: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*
      allowedMethods:
      - GET
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            app: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings/1*
      allowedMethods:
      - CREATE
      - DELETE
      - PATCH
      - POST
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            app: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings/2*
      allowedMethods:
      - PATCH

apiVersion: security.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: AccessPolicy
metadata:
  name: ratings-access
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToWorkloads:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    authn:
      tlsMode: STRICT
    authzList:
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            app: productpage
      allowedPaths:
      - /ratings*
    - allowedClients:
      - serviceAccountSelector:
          labels:
            app: reviews
      allowedMethods:
      - PATCH

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

Verify access policies

1. Create a temporary curl pod and send a request to the ratings app from your local machine. Use the kubectl debug command to create an ephemeral curl container in the deployment. This way, the curl container inherits any permissions from the app that you want to test. The communication from your local machine to the ratings app is allowed as no access policy is applied yet.

   kubectl --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -n bookinfo debug -i pods/$(kubectl get pod --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -l app=reviews -A -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') --image=curlimages/curl -- curl -v http://ratings:9080/ratings/1

   Example output:

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   ...
   {"id":1,"ratings":{"Reviewer1":5,"Reviewer2":4}}

   If the output has an error about EphemeralContainers, see Ephemeral containers don’t work when testing Bookinfo.

2. Apply one of the access policies. The access policy allows access to the ratings app from the product page app. Requests from all other clients are denied.

   kubectl apply -f policy.yaml

3. Verify that requests from a temporary curl pod are now blocked. You get back a 403 Forbidden response.

   kubectl --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -n bookinfo debug -i pods/$(kubectl get pod --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -l app=productpage -A -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') --image=curlimages/curl -- curl -v http://ratings:9080/ratings/1

   If the output has an error about EphemeralContainers, see Ephemeral containers don’t work when testing Bookinfo.

4. Verify that the productpage app can access the ratings app. Note that if you created an access policy with request header matching, you must provide the X-Test-Header: <header-value> in your curl request.

   kubectl --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -n bookinfo debug -i pods/$(kubectl get pod --context ${REMOTE_CONTEXT1} -l app=productpage -A -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') --image=curlimages/curl -- curl -v http://ratings:9080/ratings/1

   Example output:

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   ...
   {"id":1,"ratings":{"Reviewer1":5,"Reviewer2":4}}

5. Check the metrics to verify that the policy allowed or blocked requests.

   1. Open the Prometheus expression browser.

      For more information, see the CLI documentation.

      meshctl proxy prometheus

      Port-forward the prometheus-server deployment on 9091.

      kubectl -n gloo-mesh port-forward deploy/prometheus-server 9091
   2. Open your browser and connect to localhost:9091/.
   3. In the Expression search bar, enter rate(hubble_drop_total{destination_workload_id=~"ratings.+"}[5m]), then click Execute.
   4. Verify that you can see requests from the temporary curl pod to the ratings app that were dropped because of the access policy.

Cleanup

You can optionally remove the resources that you set up as part of this guide.

kubectl --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1 -n bookinfo delete accesspolicy ratings-access