We have a microservice based environment running our own authentication server that will produce JWT tokens using the /oauth/token endpoint but this server does not provide a web login page.
For our front end application we have tried the oauth2Login setups but they all want to try and redirect the browser to the authentication server, authenticate and then redirect back to the application. Likewise oauth2Client setups add an AuthenticationProvider but that will only authenticate a OAuth2AuthorizationCodeAuthenticationToken but the user login request will generate a UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken so oauth2Client provider never gets evaluated.
We were looking for something similar to the ldap authentication providers in that the username and password is collected locally and sent to the authorisation server. While we can write our own custom AuthencationProvider which accepts the UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken, communicates with the oauth server and return the generated JWT. We were hoping there was something pre-existing that was part of the current spring-boot framework. If our understanding is correct then the oauth2Client setup is what we are after but can't work out how to enable the initial authentication.
We are using spring boot 2.2.5.
I am trying to wrap my head around the concept of bearer-only clients in Keycloak.
I understand the concept of public vs confidential and the concept of service accounts and the grant_type=client_credentials stuff. But with bearer-only, I'm stuck.
Googling only reveals fragments of discussions saying:
You cannot obtain a token from keycloak with a bearer-only client.
The docs are unclear as well. All they say is:
Bearer-only access type means that the application only allows bearer token requests.
Ok, if my app only allows bearer token requests, how do I obtain this token if I cannot get it from Keycloak using client id / client secret?
And if you can't obtain a token, what can you at all? Why do these clients exist? Can somebody please provide an example of using this type of client?
Bearer-only access type meaning
Bearer-only access type means that the application only allows bearer
token requests. If this is turned on, this application cannot
participate in browser logins.
So if you select your client as bearer-only then in that case keycloak adapter will not attempt to authenticate users, but only verify bearer tokens. That why keycloak documentation also mentioned bearer-only application will not allow the login from browser.
And if you can't obtain a token, what can you at all? Why do these clients exist?
Your client can't be set as bearer-only on Keycloak Server. You can
still use bearer-only on the adapter configuration though. Keycloak
doesn't allow "bearer only" clients (when setting up your client on
the server) to obtain tokens from the server. Try to change your
client to "confidential" on the server and set bearer-only on your
adapter configuration (keycloak.json).
So if you understand above statement then if you have two microservice which are talking to each other in the case, caller will be confidential and callee will be bearer-only
And Keycloak also mentioned
Bearer only client are web service that never initiate a login .It’s typically used for securing the back-end.
So if you want to use any adapter you can use bearer-only depend on the need
EDIT-
Lets go in more details ..Let see one example i have a web-app and one rest-api for web-app i am using React/Angular/JSF any front end technology and for back-end i am using Java based rest-api OR Nodejs.
Now for above requirement i have to secure both the products(web-app,rest-api) so what will be my work of action? How will I secure both the apps through Keycloak?
So here is details explanation
I have to create two client inside a realm in keycloak
Client A will be use by web-app
Client B will be used by rest-api
So now question will be why two client?
For web-app we want to force user to login via GUI then only generate the token
For rest-api we dont want GUI based api as these api consume by web-app but still secure the access to rest-api.
Now Go to Client A and make its Access Type public client so web-app will ask to login via keycloak GUI or your login page then generate the token
So same token which generated in above step used by rest-api and according to user role and other information data will fetch. So Access Type of Client B will be bearer-only so web-app generated token is passed to rest-api and it is then used to authorize the user .
Hope it will help. Someone want to add more he/she free to add.
Short answer: you can't obtain an access token using a bearer-only client, so authentication flow configuration is irrelevant, but keycloak may still need to know such a bearer only client to manage role / or audience
More details
bearer-only clients usefully represents back-end applications, like web service, called by front application and secured by the authorization server (= keycloak)
Backend / Web service application are not called directly by user, so they can't play in the Oauth2.0 user interactive flow. Setting "bearer-only" document this fact to keycloak server, allowing administrator to configure client without otherwise mandatory values (example redirect uri…) and allowing usefull error messages if someone trying to obtain a token for such a client
However, this doesn't mean you cannot configure specific roles for this client: so it need to appear in keycloak realm.
In addition bearer-only client need to verify the received access token, especially, if this (recommenden) adapter feature "verify-token-audience" is activated, bearer-only client need to verify that the access token has been issued for it: the bearer-only client must be in the audience attribute of the access token:
see https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_admin/index.html#_audience
for audience managing by keycloak, bearer-only clients needs to be registered in keycloak realm.
In my understanding, it is used when you have some internal service.
Let's say you have ServiceA and ServiceB. A user calls ServiceA which in hand calls ServiceB. ServiceB is never called by the user directly, only by other services. ServiceA will get a token using the user's credentials. And then will use this token to call ServiceB. ServiceB will never initiate a login. It will just use the token to verify permissions.
In this case, ServiceA will be confidential and ServiceB will be bearer-only clients.
An other idea why bearer only clients exist could be that client are misused for role containers sometimes, see the following discussion on the Keycloak User mailing list https://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/keycloak-user/2016-April/005731.html
E. g. the default client "realm-management" is a bearer only client, that contains roles to manage things in a realm. There is no need to invoke a login on a client like this, so public and confidential doesn't make any sense.
We have enterprise connector that has been designed and developed to access SharePoint resources via standard REST API calls from our platform to SharePoint. The authentication mechanism utilized by the enterprise connector is a standard OAuth 2.0 authentication using Client ID, Client Secret and resource to obtain an access token from a known IDP (accounts.accesscontrol.windows.net). The access token obtained in the previous call is used, as an Authorization header, for authorization to the SharePoint instance in subsequent REST API calls. The REST API requests are sent to a direct SharePoint URL (i.e. ourcompany.sharepoint.com) and are serviced by that service instance.
In the case of trying to use the standard enterprise connector with the SharePoint Online instance for this customer, the SharePoint URL that we have been instructed to send API requests to is an internal URL and is using Auto-Acceleration. All requests to this URL are forwarded to a federated authentication system maintained by the customer. All API requests sent to this URL are answered with error code -2147024891 System.UnauthorizedAccessException - "Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource." This is the also the case when sending API requests from a tool such as Postman - as to eliminate the authentication used by the enterprise connector as root cause of the access denial.
The solution we're seeking is the proper avenue to access the REST API services on this SharePoint Online instance. Is there a different authentication mechanism required in this scenario? Are there different API endpoints required to access SharePoint resources in this situation? Additional configuration required to allow access?
Any suggestions and/or guidance are appreciated.
I'm designing a REST service in Node, and I have a plan for authentication and authorization -- but I'm not certain whether there's an unforeseen flaw in the design.
I have a central API server exposed to the Internet. The server also hosts a manager application (which communicates via AJAX), but is authenticated separately from the API, per requirement.
My initial thoughts are to have the server authenticate the user with a login form, then send the user a token (all over HTTPS, of course) that can be sent with each request to the API server for authentication and authorization.
Are there any flaws with this methodology?
I saw the word "endpoint" many times in OAuth documents.. However, I still don't know what does this word really mean.. Does anyone have ideas about this?
The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework
The authorization process utilizes two authorization server endpoints
(HTTP resources):
Authorization endpoint - used by the client to obtain
authorization from the resource owner via user-agent redirection.
Token endpoint - used by the client to exchange an
authorization
grant for an access token, typically with client authentication.
Its basically the HTTP web address of the authentication server. It could probably be server addresses depending upon how its worked. The first is for requesting access of the user the second could be for granting access to the application. this probably depends upon how the Authentication server is set up.
OAuth endpoints are the URLs you use to make OAuth authentication requests to Server. You need to use the correct OAuth endpoint when issuing authentication requests in your application. The primary OAuth endpoints depend upon the system you are trying to access.
Example Google has two end points:
Request access of user:
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2
Exchange tokens
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token