LDAP Authentication

Add LDAP Bind Authentication to a Route with username and password protection. The plugin checks for valid credentials in the Proxy-Authorization and Authorization headers (in that order).

This plugin is the open-source version of the LDAP Authentication Advanced plugin, which provides additional features such as LDAP searches for group and consumer mapping:

• Ability to authenticate based on username or custom ID.
• The ability to bind to an enterprise LDAP directory with a password.
• The ability to authenticate/authorize using a group base DN and specific group member or group name attributes.

Configuration Reference

This plugin is compatible with requests with the following protocols:

• http
• https
• gprc
• grpcs

This plugin is compatible with DB-less mode.

In DB-less mode, you configure Kong Gateway declaratively. Therefore, the Admin API is mostly read-only. The only tasks it can perform are all related to handling the declarative config, including:

• setting a target's health status in the load balancer
• validating configurations against schemas
• uploading the declarative configuration using the /config endpoint

Enable the plugin on a route

$ curl -X POST http://{HOST}:8001/routes/{ROUTE}/plugins \
    --data "name=ldap-auth"  \
    --data "config.hide_credentials=true" \
    --data "config.ldap_host=ldap.example.com" \
    --data "config.ldap_port=389" \
    --data "config.start_tls=false" \
    --data "config.ldaps=false" \
    --data "config.base_dn=dc=example,dc=com" \
    --data "config.verify_ldap_host=false" \
    --data "config.attribute=cn" \
    --data "config.cache_ttl=60" \
    --data "config.header_type=ldap"

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <ldap-auth-example>
config: 
  hide_credentials: true
  ldap_host: ldap.example.com
  ldap_port: 389
  start_tls: false
  ldaps: false
  base_dn: dc=example,dc=com
  verify_ldap_host: false
  attribute: cn
  cache_ttl: 60
  header_type: ldap
plugin: ldap-auth

apiVersion: networking/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: {ROUTE}
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong
    konghq.com/plugins: <ldap-auth-example>
spec:
  rules:
  - host: examplehostname.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /bar
        backend:
          serviceName: echo
          servicePort: 80

plugins:
- name: ldap-auth
  route: <route>
  config: 
    hide_credentials: true
    ldap_host: ldap.example.com
    ldap_port: 389
    start_tls: false
    ldaps: false
    base_dn: dc=example,dc=com
    verify_ldap_host: false
    attribute: cn
    cache_ttl: 60
    header_type: ldap

Enable the plugin globally

A plugin which is not associated to any service, route, or consumer is considered global, and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

$ curl -X POST http://{HOST}:8001/plugins/ \
    --data "name=ldap-auth"  \
    --data "config.hide_credentials=true" \
    --data "config.ldap_host=ldap.example.com" \
    --data "config.ldap_port=389" \
    --data "config.start_tls=false" \
    --data "config.ldaps=false" \
    --data "config.base_dn=dc=example,dc=com" \
    --data "config.verify_ldap_host=false" \
    --data "config.attribute=cn" \
    --data "config.cache_ttl=60" \
    --data "config.header_type=ldap"

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongClusterPlugin
metadata:
  name: <global-ldap-auth>
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong
  labels:
    global: \"true\"
config: 
  hide_credentials: true
  ldap_host: ldap.example.com
  ldap_port: 389
  start_tls: false
  ldaps: false
  base_dn: dc=example,dc=com
  verify_ldap_host: false
  attribute: cn
  cache_ttl: 60
  header_type: ldap
plugin: ldap-auth

plugins:
- name: ldap-auth
  config: 
    hide_credentials: true
    ldap_host: ldap.example.com
    ldap_port: 389
    start_tls: false
    ldaps: false
    base_dn: dc=example,dc=com
    verify_ldap_host: false
    attribute: cn
    cache_ttl: 60
    header_type: ldap

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:

Usage

To authenticate a user, the client must set credentials in either the Proxy-Authorization or Authorization header in the following format:

credentials := [ldap | LDAP] base64(username:password)

The Authorization header would look something like:

Authorization:  ldap dGxibGVzc2luZzpLMG5nU3RyMG5n

The plugin validates the user against the LDAP server and caches the credentials for future requests for the duration specified in config.cache_ttl.

You can set the header type ldap to any string (such as basic) using config.header_type.

Upstream Headers

When a client has been authenticated, the plugin appends some headers to the request before proxying it to the upstream service so that you can identify the consumer in your code:

• X-Anonymous-Consumer, will be set to true when authentication failed, and the ‘anonymous’ consumer was set instead.
• X-Consumer-ID, the ID of the ‘anonymous’ consumer on Kong (only if authentication failed and ‘anonymous’ was set)
• X-Consumer-Custom-ID, the custom_id of the ‘anonymous’ consumer (only if authentication failed and ‘anonymous’ was set)
• X-Consumer-Username, the username of the ‘anonymous’ consumer (only if authentication failed and ‘anonymous’ was set)
• X-Credential-Identifier, the identifier of the Credential (only if the consumer is not the ‘anonymous’ consumer)

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.