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RBAC in Kong Manager
In addition to authenticating Admins and segmenting Workspaces, Kong Gateway has the ability to enforce Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for all resources with the use of Roles assigned to Admins.
As the Super Admin (or any Role with read and write
access to the /admins
and /rbac
endpoints), it is possible to
create new Roles and customize Permissions.
In Kong Manager, RBAC affects how Admins are able to navigate through the application.
Default Roles
Kong includes Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Every Admin using Kong Manager will need an assigned Role based on the resources they have Permission to access.
When a Super Admin starts Kong for the first time, the default
Workspace will
include three default Roles: read-only
, admin
, and super-admin
. The three
Roles have Permissions related to every Workspace in the cluster.
Similarly, if a Role is confined to certain Workspaces, the Admin assigned to it will not be able to see either the overview or links to other Workspaces.
If a Role does not have Permission to access entire endpoints, the Admin assigned to the Role will not be able to see the related navigation links.
Important: Although a default Admin has full permissions with every endpoint in Kong, only a Super Admin has the ability to assign and modify RBAC Permissions. An Admin is not able to modify their own Permissions or delimit a Super Admin’s Permissions.
RBAC in Workspaces
RBAC Roles and Permissions will be specific to a Workspace if they are assigned from within one. For example, if there are two Workspaces, Payments and Deliveries, an Admin created in Payments will not have access to any endpoints in Deliveries.
When a Super Admin creates a new Workspace, there are three default Roles that
mirror the cluster-level Roles, and a fourth unique to each Workspace:
workspace-read-only
, workspace-admin
, workspace-super-admin
, and
workspace-portal-admin
.
These roles can be viewed in the Teams > Roles tab in Kong Manager.
Important: Any role assigned in the
default
workspace has permissions to all subsequently created workspaces unless roles in specific workspaces are explicitly assigned. When roles across multiple workspaces are assigned, roles in workspaces other thandefault
take precedent. For example, a super admin assigned to thesuper-admin
role in thedefault
workspace as well as theworkspace-read-only
role in thews
workspace has RBAC permissions across all workspaces and full permissions to endpoints in workspaces except thews
workspace. The admin only has read-only permissions to endpoints in thews
workspace.
How RBAC rules work in Kong Gateway
Although there are concepts like groups and roles in Kong Gateway, when determining if a user has sufficient permissions to access the endpoint, combinations of workspace and endpoint are collected from roles and groups assigned to a user, being the minimal unit for Kong Gateway to check for permissions. These combinations will be referred to as “rules” in the following paragraphs.
Kong Gateway uses a precedence model, from most specificity to least specificity, to determine if a user has access to an endpoint. For each request Kong Gateway checks for an RBAC rule assigned to the requesting user in the following order:
-
An allow or deny rule against the current endpoint in the current workspace
-
An allow or deny rule against the current endpoint in any workspace (
*
) -
An allow or deny rule against any endpoint (
*
) in the current workspace -
An allow or deny rule against any endpoint (
*
) in any workspace (*
)
If Kong Gateway finds a matching rule for the current user, endpoint, and workspace it allows or denies the request according to that rule. Once Kong Gateway finds an applicable rule, it stops, and does not continue checking for less specific rules. If no rules are found, the request is denied.
The default admin roles define permissions for any workspace is (*
).
Kong Gateway stops at the first role, which means any role assigned in the default workspace has permissions to all subsequently created workspaces unless roles
in specific workspaces are explicitly assigned. When roles across multiple workspaces are assigned, roles in workspaces
other than default take precedent. For example, a user assigned to the super-admin
role in the default workspace as well
as the workspace-read-only
role in the ws
workspace has full permissions to endpoints in all workspaces except the ws
workspace. The user only has read-only permissions to endpoints in the ws
workspace.
Kong Gateway allows you to add negative rules to a role. A negative rule denies actions associated with the endpoint. Meanwhile, a negative rule precedes other non-negative rules while following the above rules.