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Configure OIDC provider as SSO

There are many OIDC (OpenID Connect) providers available, we already have guides for some of them:

For other providers, you can follow this guide which will explain the general steps to follow.

OAuth2 Provider Configuration

1. Create an OIDC application in your chosen provider.

This application should use standard OAuth2/OIDC authorization code flow with CLIENT_SECRET_BASIC authentication method.

2. Set OAuth2 authorized redirect URI in your application

For the OAuth2 authorization code flow to work, the OAuth2 provider needs to know; and authorize; where to redirect the user after the authentication process. This is called the redirect URI or callback URI.

The redirect URI will look like this:
http(s)://<Console host>(:<Console port>)/oauth/callback/<OAuth2 config name>

Where <Console host> and <Console port> depend on the Console external URL used and/or configured, and <OAuth2 config name> is the name of the OAuth2 configuration in your Console configuration file see Console configuration step.

More details on Console external URL

When Console initiate the OAuth2 authorization code flow, it tells the OIDC provider where to redirect the user after the authentication process.

But to forge this redirect URI, Console has several choices:

Console external URL is configured

If the Console external URL is configured using environment variable CDK_PLATFORM_EXTERNAL_URL or configuration platform.external.url, it will use it.
But SSO will work ONLY if Console is accessed using this URL. If you try to log in from the second URL you will be redirected to the first URL and then lose browser authentication cookies meaning the SSO will not work.

Console external URL is NOT configured

When no external Console URL is enforced, Console will use requests headers to resolve this external URL. This is recommended if Console is accessed using multiple URLs (internal, external, etc) and have SSO on each of them.

The resolution strategy is the following:

  1. Use the Forwarded header. This is the preferred method if you are using a reverse proxy in front of Console. It uses the host and proto directives (if set) of Forwarded header to determine the external URL.
  2. Use the X-Forwarded-* headers. Support for the non-standard forwarded headers coming from some reverse proxy implementations.
    It uses the X-Forwarded-Proto, X-Forwarded-Host and X-Forwarded-Port headers to determine the external URL.
  3. Use the Host header. Used if you access to Console directly, without a reverse proxy.
    In this case, the Host header (generally set by the browser) will be used to determine the external URL.
note

Port will be guessed depending on the content of the Host header and fallback to Console configured port using environment variable CDK_LISTENING_PORT (default to 8080).
Scheme (http/https) will be guessed depending on the current TLS configuration of Console. See TLS configuration for more details. (default to http).

3. Get the client id and client secret from application settings

Console Configuration

On Console side, you need to configure several properties to enable OIDC SSO.

Required properties are:

  • sso.oauth2.name: the name of the OAuth2 configuration. This name will be used in the redirect URI defined on your provider in the steps before. It must be unique.
  • sso.oauth2.client-id: the client ID of your OAuth2 application.
  • sso.oauth2.client-secret: the client secret of your OAuth2 application.
  • sso.oauth2.openid.issuer: the issuer URL of your OpenID Connect provider. This url is used to discover the provider configuration using the .well-known/openid-configuration path.

Optionally, you can configure the following properties:

  • sso.oauth2.scopes: the list of scopes to request during the authorization code flow.

For a detailed list of OAuth2 configurations supported by Console please refer to this page.

Example

Here is an example of a configuration file for a generic OIDC provider:

platform-config.yaml
sso:
oauth2:
- name: "oidc-provider"
client-id: "<client ID>"
client-secret: "<client ID>"
openid:
issuer: "https://<oidc domain>/"

The provider exposes its configuration using the well-known endpoint: https://<oidc domain>/.well-known/openid-configuration.