PASETO

Paseto (Platform-Agnostic SEcurity TOkens) is a specification and reference implementation for secure stateless tokens.

Verify requests containing signed PASETOs (as specified in PASETO RFC). Each of your Consumers will have PASETO credentials (public and secret keys) which must be used to sign their PASETOs. A token can then be passed through:

• a query string parameter,
• a cookie,
• or the Authorization header.

The plugin will either proxy the request to your upstream services if the token’s signature is verified, or discard the request if not. The plugin can also perform verifications on registered claims and custom claims.

Feature Support

• v2.public JSON payload PASETOs
• Registered claims validation
• Custom claims validation

Terminology

• plugin: a plugin executing actions inside Kong before or after a request has been proxied to the upstream API.
• Service: the Kong entity representing an external upstream API or microservice.
• Route: the Kong entity representing a way to map downstream requests to upstream services.
• upstream service: this refers to your own API/service sitting behind Kong, to which client requests are forwarded.
• API: a legacy entity used to represent your upstream services. Deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.

Configuration

Enabling the plugin on a Service

With a database

Configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/services/{service}/plugins \
    --data "name=paseto" 

Without a database

Configure this plugin on a Service by adding this section do your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: paseto
  service: {service}
  config: 

In both cases, {service} is the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Route

With a database

Configure this plugin on a Route with:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/routes/{route}/plugins \
    --data "name=paseto" 

Without a database

Configure this plugin on a Route by adding this section do your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: paseto
  route: {route}
  config: 

In both cases, {route} is the id or name of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on an API

If you are using an older version of Kong with the legacy API entity (deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.), you can configure this plugin on top of such an API by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/apis/{api}/plugins \
    --data "name=paseto" 

• api: either id or name of the API that this plugin configuration will target.

Global plugins

• Using a database, all plugins can be configured using the http://kong:8001/plugins/ endpoint.
• Without a database, all plugins can be configured via the plugins: entry on the declarative configuration file.

A plugin which is not associated to any Service, Route or Consumer (or API, if you are using an older version of Kong) is considered "global", and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

Parameters

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

Claim Rules

• ForAudience which compares the payload-provided aud claim with an expected value.
• IdentifiedBy which compares the payload-provided jti claim with an expected value.
• IssuedBy which compares the payload-provided iss claim with an expected value.
• NotExpired which verifies that the current time is less than or equal to the DateTime stored in the exp claim.
• Subject which compares the payload-provided sub claim with an expected value.
• ValidAt which verifies all of the following:
  • The current time is less than or equal to the DateTime stored in the exp claim.
  • The current time is greater than or equal to the DateTime stored in the iat claim.
  • The current time is greater than or equal to the DateTime stored in the nbf claim.
• ContainsClaim which verifies that the payload contains a claim with the specified name.
• {custom_claim} which verifies that the payload contains a claim with the name set in the {claim_name} placeholder and with an expected value.

Installation

Sodium Crypto Library

This plugin uses the PASETO for Lua library, which in turn depends on the Sodium crypto library (libsodium). The following is a convenient way to install libsodium via LuaRocks. Alternatively, see libsodium’s documentation for full installation instructions.

luarocks install libsodium

Note: The Sodium Crypto Library must be installed on each node in your Kong cluster.

PASETO Kong Plugin

Install the plugin on each node in your Kong cluster via luarocks:

luarocks install kong-plugin-paseto

Add to the custom_plugins list in your Kong configuration (on each Kong node):

custom_plugins = paseto

Usage

In order to use the plugin, you first need to create a Consumer and associate one or more PASETO credentials (holding the public key used to verify the token) to it. The Consumer represents a developer using the final service.

Create a Consumer

You need to associate a credential to an existing Consumer object. To create a Consumer, you can execute the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/consumers \
    --data "username=<USERNAME>" \
    --data "custom_id=<CUSTOM_ID>"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created

A Consumer can have many PASETO credentials.

Create a PASETO credential

You can provision a new PASETO credential by issuing the following HTTP request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/consumers/{consumer}/paseto -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created

{
   "consumer_id": "94c058d0-f5f1-4afc-ab18-eab487492a03",
   "created_at": 1530751342000,
   "id": "f99c0041-6271-43d3-bebd-32479c2746b6",
   "kid": "ikypl5x7QEKShEoEzFxfz5axONlgjdza",
   "public_key": "8SQDqtA5yx4atQEg0uH3Rit3nLq+EAQF4A1Zkvwh5TU=",
   "secret_key": "hbJbxFK3xFL1YlrcqodKqt0FvVyZjmPXQqOIexzxsVbxJAOq0DnLHhq1ASDS4fdGK3ecur4QBAXgDVmS/CHlNQ=="
}

• consumer: The id or username property of the Consumer entity to associate the credentials to.

If neither secret_key or public_key are supplied the plugin will generate a new key pair.

Delete a PASETO credential

You can remove a Consumer’s PASETO credential by issuing the following HTTP request:

$ curl -X DELETE http://kong:8001/consumers/{consumer}/paseto/{id}
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

• consumer: The id or username property of the Consumer entity to associate the credentials to.
• id: The id of the PASETO credential.

List PASETO credentials

You can list a Consumer’s PASETO credentials by issuing the following HTTP request:

$ curl -X GET http://kong:8001/consumers/{consumer}/paseto
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

• consumer: The id or username property of the Consumer entity to list credentials for.

{
    "data": [
        {
           "consumer_id": "94c058d0-f5f1-4afc-ab18-eab487492a03",
           "created_at": 1530751342000,
           "id": "f99c0041-6271-43d3-bebd-32479c2746b6",
           "kid": "ikypl5x7QEKShEoEzFxfz5axONlgjdza",
           "public_key": "8SQDqtA5yx4atQEg0uH3Rit3nLq+EAQF4A1Zkvwh5TU=",
           "secret_key": "hbJbxFK3xFL1YlrcqodKqt0FvVyZjmPXQqOIexzxsVbxJAOq0DnLHhq1ASDS4fdGK3ecur4QBAXgDVmS/CHlNQ=="
        }
    ],
    "total": 1
}

Send a request with a PASETO

PASETOs can now be included in a request to Kong by adding it to the Authorization header:

$ curl http://kong:8000/{route path} \
    -H 'Authorization: Bearer v2.public.eyJuYmYiOiIyMDE4LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwiaWF0IjoiMjAxOC0wMS0wMVQwMDowMDowMCswMDowMCIsImlzcyI6InBhcmFnb25pZS5jb20iLCJhdWQiOiJzb21lLWF1ZGllbmNlLmNvbSIsImRhdGEiOiJ0aGlzIGlzIGEgc2lnbmVkIG1lc3NhZ2UiLCJleHAiOiIyMDk5LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwianRpIjoiODdJRlNHRmdQTnRRTk51dzBBdHVMdHRQIiwic3ViIjoidGVzdCIsIm15Y2xhaW0iOiJyZXF1aXJlZCB2YWx1ZSJ9-8bFBx9Z5665JK3Rfwl3v2rx-etZ0H-EAkmbOdt1VI4h3gDzMsqUR2pRRdBvzPiv5cPDQqmaJ1gcqnXR3P0BDQ.eyJraWQiOiJzaWduYXR1cmVfdmVyaWZpY2F0aW9uX3N1Y2Nlc3MifQ'

as a querystring parameter, if configured in config.uri_param_names (which contains paseto by default):

$ curl http://kong:8000/{route path}?paseto=v2.public.eyJuYmYiOiIyMDE4LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwiaWF0IjoiMjAxOC0wMS0wMVQwMDowMDowMCswMDowMCIsImlzcyI6InBhcmFnb25pZS5jb20iLCJhdWQiOiJzb21lLWF1ZGllbmNlLmNvbSIsImRhdGEiOiJ0aGlzIGlzIGEgc2lnbmVkIG1lc3NhZ2UiLCJleHAiOiIyMDk5LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwianRpIjoiODdJRlNHRmdQTnRRTk51dzBBdHVMdHRQIiwic3ViIjoidGVzdCIsIm15Y2xhaW0iOiJyZXF1aXJlZCB2YWx1ZSJ9-8bFBx9Z5665JK3Rfwl3v2rx-etZ0H-EAkmbOdt1VI4h3gDzMsqUR2pRRdBvzPiv5cPDQqmaJ1gcqnXR3P0BDQ.eyJraWQiOiJzaWduYXR1cmVfdmVyaWZpY2F0aW9uX3N1Y2Nlc3MifQ

or as cookie, if the name is configured in config.cookie_names (which is not enabled by default):

curl --cookie paseto=v2.public.eyJuYmYiOiIyMDE4LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwiaWF0IjoiMjAxOC0wMS0wMVQwMDowMDowMCswMDowMCIsImlzcyI6InBhcmFnb25pZS5jb20iLCJhdWQiOiJzb21lLWF1ZGllbmNlLmNvbSIsImRhdGEiOiJ0aGlzIGlzIGEgc2lnbmVkIG1lc3NhZ2UiLCJleHAiOiIyMDk5LTAxLTAxVDAwOjAwOjAwKzAwOjAwIiwianRpIjoiODdJRlNHRmdQTnRRTk51dzBBdHVMdHRQIiwic3ViIjoidGVzdCIsIm15Y2xhaW0iOiJyZXF1aXJlZCB2YWx1ZSJ9-8bFBx9Z5665JK3Rfwl3v2rx-etZ0H-EAkmbOdt1VI4h3gDzMsqUR2pRRdBvzPiv5cPDQqmaJ1gcqnXR3P0BDQ.eyJraWQiOiJzaWduYXR1cmVfdmVyaWZpY2F0aW9uX3N1Y2Nlc3MifQ http://kong:8000/{route path}

Note: When the PASETO is valid and proxied to the upstream service, Kong makes no modification to the request other than adding headers identifying the Consumer. The PASETO will be forwarded to your upstream service, which can assume its validity. It is now the role of your service to base64 decode the PASETO claims and make use of them.