Log in an employeeΒΆ
This how-to guides you through the steps required to ensure that only employees authenticated with Entra ID can access your application.
PrerequisitesΒΆ
Before you begin, ensure that you have:
- Familiarized yourselves with the login proxy concepts.
- Exposed your application with an ingress.
Configure your applicationΒΆ
Enable the login proxy for Entra ID in your application configuration:
Login proxy is only available in GCP
Login proxy is only available in GCP clusters, and will not work in on-prem clusters.
See the Nais application reference for the complete specifications with all possible options.
Grant access to usersΒΆ
By default, no users have access to your application. You must explicitly grant access to either specific groups, all users, or both.
GroupsΒΆ
To only allow access for users that belong to a specific set of groups, you must do two things:
- specify the group identifiers. To find your group's identifier, see finding the group identifier.
- set the
allowAllUsers
property tofalse
spec:
azure:
application:
enabled: true
allowAllUsers: false
claims:
groups:
- id: "<group identifier>"
Entra ID will deny logins and on-behalf-of token requests for users that aren't direct members of the specified groups. Transitive membership through nested groups is not supported.
The groups
claim in JWTs will include matching groups identifiers that the user is a direct member of.
Warning
Invalid group identifiers are skipped and will not be granted access to your application. Ensure that they are correct and exist in Entra ID.
All usersΒΆ
To allow all users to access your application, set the allowAllUsers
property to true
:
This is assigns a set of extra groups to the application, which covers all users in the Entra ID tenant.
The groups
claim in JWTs will also include the extra groups that the user is a direct member of.
Groups and all usersΒΆ
If you want to implement custom group-based authorization logic in your application, combine the above two configurations:
spec:
azure:
application:
enabled: true
allowAllUsers: true
claims:
groups:
- id: "<group identifier>"
This has the following effects:
- All users are allowed to access your application, i.e. through logins or on-behalf-of token requests.
- The
groups
claim in JWTs will include matching groups identifiers that the user is a direct member of. This also includes the extra groups added by theallowAllUsers
property.
Handle inbound requestsΒΆ
Now that your application is configured, you will need to handle inbound requests in your application code.
As long as the user is authenticated, all requests to your application at the server-side will include the Authorization
header with the user's access_token
as a Bearer token.
Your application is responsible for verifying that this token is present and valid. To do so, follow these steps:
Handle missing or empty Authorization
headerΒΆ
If the Authorization
header is missing or empty, the employee is unauthenticated.
Return an appropriate HTTP status code to the frontend, and redirect the employee's user agent to the login endpoint:
Validate token in Authorization
headerΒΆ
If the Authorization
header is present, validate the JWT Bearer token within.
If invalid, redirect the employee to the login endpoint:
To validate a token, you can either:
- validate tokens with Texas, or
- validate JWTs manually in your application
Validate with TexasΒΆ
Texas is not enabled by default
See the Texas documentation for more information.
Send a HTTP POST request to the endpoint found in the NAIS_TOKEN_INTROSPECTION_ENDPOINT
environment variable.
The request must have a Content-Type
header set to either:
application/json
orapplication/x-www-form-urlencoded
The body of the request should contain the following parameters:
Parameter | Example Value | Description |
---|---|---|
identity_provider |
azuread |
Always azuread . |
token |
eyJra... |
The access token you wish to validate. |
The response is always a HTTP 200 OK response with a JSON body.
It always contains the active
field, which is a boolean value that indicates whether the token is valid or not.
Success responseΒΆ
If the token is valid, the response will additionally contain all the token's claims:
Claims are copied verbatim from the token to the response.
Which claims are validated by Texas?
Texas only validates the token's signature and its standard claims.
Other claims are included in the response, but are not validated by Texas. Your application must validate these other claims according to your own requirements.
Error responseΒΆ
If the token is invalid, the only additional field in the response is the error
field:
The error
field contains a human-readable error message that describes why the token is invalid.
Validate JWT manuallyΒΆ
Validating a JWT involves a number of steps. These steps are outlined and described below in a language- and framework-agnostic way.
Libraries for token validation
We recommend using a library in your language of choice to handle all the validation steps described below. Here are some recommended libraries:
- navikt/oasis (JavaScript)
- navikt/token-support (Java / Kotlin)
Validation is also supported by many popular frameworks:
- Ktor (Kotlin)
- Spring Security (Java / Kotlin)
To validate the token, start by validating the signature and standard time-related claims.
Additionally, perform the following validations:
Issuer Validation
Validate that the iss
claim has a value that is equal to either:
- the
AZURE_OPENID_CONFIG_ISSUER
environment variable, or - the
issuer
property from the metadata discovery document. The document is found at the endpoint pointed to by theAZURE_APP_WELL_KNOWN_URL
environment variable.
Audience Validation
Validate that the aud
claim is equal to the AZURE_APP_CLIENT_ID
environment variable.
Signature Validation
Validate that the token is signed with a public key published at the JWKS endpoint. This endpoint URI can be found in one of two ways:
- the
AZURE_OPENID_CONFIG_JWKS_URI
environment variable, or - the
jwks_uri
property from the metadata discovery document. The document is found at the endpoint pointed to by theAZURE_APP_WELL_KNOWN_URL
environment variable.
Claims Validation
Other claims may be present in the token. Validation of these claims is optional.
Next stepsΒΆ
The employee is now authenticated and can access your application.
You can extract the claims from the subject token found in the Authorization
header to assert the user's identity.
However, the token is only valid for your application. To consume other APIs on behalf of the employee, exchange the token for a new token that targets a specific API.
Related pagesΒΆ
Learn how to consume other APIs on behalf of a employee