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Enable LDAP for Kong Manager

Kong Gateway offers the ability to bind authentication for Kong Manager Admins to a company’s Active Directory using the LDAP Authentication Advanced plugin.

Using the configuration below, it is unnecessary to manually apply the LDAP plugin; the configuration alone will enable LDAP Authentication for Kong Manager.

Enable LDAP

Ensure Kong is configured with the following properties either in the kong.conf configuration file or using environment variables:

admin_gui_auth = ldap-auth-advanced
enforce_rbac = on
admin_gui_session_conf = { "secret":"set-your-string-here" }
admin_gui_auth_conf = {                                       \
    "anonymous":"",                                           \
    "attribute":"<ENTER_YOUR_ATTRIBUTE_HERE>",                \
    "bind_dn":"<ENTER_YOUR_BIND_DN_HERE>",                    \
    "base_dn":"<ENTER_YOUR_BASE_DN_HERE>",                    \
    "cache_ttl": 2,                                           \
    "consumer_by":["username", "custom_id"],                  \
    "header_type":"Basic",                                    \
    "keepalive":60000,                                        \
    "ldap_host":"<ENTER_YOUR_LDAP_HOST_HERE>",                \
    "ldap_password":"<ENTER_YOUR_LDAP_PASSWORD_HERE>",        \
    "ldap_port":389,                                          \
    "start_tls":false,                                        \
    "timeout":10000,                                          \
    "verify_ldap_host":true                                   \
}

Attribute	Description
`attribute`	The attribute used to identify LDAP users. For example, to map LDAP users to admins by their username, set `uid`.
`bind_dn`	LDAP Bind DN (Distinguished Name). Used to perform LDAP search for the user. This `bind_dn` should have permissions to search for the user being authenticated. For example, `uid=einstein,ou=scientists,dc=ldap,dc=com`.
`base_dn`	LDAP Base DN (Distinguished Name). For example, `ou=scientists,dc=ldap,dc=com`.
`ldap_host`	LDAP host domain. For example, `ec2-XX-XXX-XX-XXX.compute-1.amazonaws.com`.
`ldap_port`	The default LDAP port is 389. 636 is the port required for SSL LDAP and AD. If `ldaps` is configured, you must use port 636. For more complex Active Directory (AD) environments, instead of Domain Controller and port 389, consider using a Global Catalog host and port, which is port 3268 by default.
`ldap_password`	LDAP password. As with any configuration property, sensitive information may be set as an environment variable instead of being written directly in the configuration file.

The Sessions plugin (configured with admin_gui_session_conf) requires a secret and is configured securely by default.

Under all circumstances, the secret must be manually set to a string.
If using HTTP instead of HTTPS, cookie_secure must be manually set to false.
If using different domains for the Admin API and Kong Manager, cookie_samesite must be set to off.

Learn more about these properties in Session Security in Kong Manager, and see example configurations.

After starting Kong with the desired configuration, you can create new Admins whose usernames match those in the AD. Those users will then be able to accept invitations to join Kong Manager and log in with their LDAP credentials.

Using Service Directory Mapping on the CLI

When using only RBAC Token authorization, Service Directory Mapping to Kong Roles does not take effect. If you need to use CLI access with your Service Directory mapping, you can use the same authentication mechanism that Kong Manager uses to secure browser sessions.

Authenticate User Session

Retrieve a secure cookie session with the authorized LDAP user credentials:

$ curl -c /tmp/cookie http://localhost:8001/auth \
-H 'Kong-Admin-User: <LDAP_USERNAME>' \
--user <LDAP_USERNAME>:<LDAP_PASSWORD>

Now the cookie is stored at /tmp/cookie and can be read for future requests:

$ curl -c /tmp/cookie -b /tmp/cookie http://localhost:8001/consumers \
-H 'Kong-Admin-User: <LDAP_USERNAME>'

Because Kong Manager is a browser application, if any HTTP responses see the Set-Cookie header, then it will automatically attach it to future requests. This is why it is helpful to utilize cURL’s cookie engine or HTTPie sessions. If storing the session is not desired, then the Set-Cookie header value can be copied directly from the /auth response and used with subsequent requests.