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Secure a workload with Application Single Sign-On

This tutorial tells you how to secure a Workload running on Tanzu Application Platform with Application Single Sign-On (commonly called AppSSO).

For specific stack implementations, see Secure a single-page app workload and Secure a Spring Boot workload.

The Getting Started topic explains how to obtain OAuth2 client credentials for an authorization server by claiming them from an Application Single Sign-On service offering. You can enable this by running the tanzu service class-claims create command or by using a ClassClaim resource. In either case, you can customize your OAuth2 client settings by providing parameters within your claim. To secure your Workload, you must provide the appropriate parameters relevant to the given situation.

The following sections elaborate on each parameter in details and guide the process of loading credentials into a Workload.

When editing your ClassClaim, you must recreate it in order for the changes to take effect. Updating an existing ClassClaim does not produce any impact. For more information, see Using a ClassClaim.

OAuth2 client parameters

A ClassClaim for an Application Single Sign-On service is the request for OAuth2 client credentials for an authorization server.

The following is an example of a claim for a service called sso, which customizes all available client parameters:

---
apiVersion: services.apps.tanzu.vmware.com/v1alpha1
kind: ClassClaim
metadata:
  name: my-sso-client
  namespace: my-apps
spec:
  classRef:
    name: sso
  parameters:
    workloadRef:
      name: my-workload
    redirectPaths:
      - /login/oauth2/code/my-sso-client
    displayName: "My SSO client"
    scopes:
      - name: openid
      - name: email
      - name: profile
      - name: roles
      - name: coffee.make
        description: bestows the ultimate power
    authorizationGrantTypes:
      - client_credentials
      - authorization_code
      - refresh_token
    clientAuthenticationMethod: client_secret_basic
    requireUserConsent: true

To verify the status of this ClassClaim, run:

kubectl get classclaim my-sso-client --namespace my-apps

After a ClassClaim is applied and its status shows Ready, it can be consumed by a Workload. When the credentials are loaded into a Workload, your application code can use them to initiate OAuth2 flows.

redirectPaths

As a critical part of your client parameters, redirectPaths define the locations to which you application’s end-users are redirected to after the authentication. Incorrect redirect URIs often cause errors for clients and are the most common source of such issues. When redirect URIs are not configured accurately, your application encounter errors and can not perform OAuth2 flows.

For servlet-based Spring Boot workloads using Spring Security OAuth 2 Client library, the default redirect path template looks as follows:

/login/oauth2/code/{ClassClaim.metadata.name}`

For more information about the format, see the Spring documentation.

For example, configure a single redirect path in ClassClaim:

spec:
  parameters:
    redirectPaths:
      - /login/oauth2/code/my-sso-client

Behind the scenes your redirect paths are templated into the full redirect URIs including a scheme and fully-qualified domain name. For example, your actual redirect URI might look as follows:

https://my-workload.my-apps.example.com/login/oauth2/code/my-sso-client

The choice of scheme (https or http), the template for the subdomain and the ingress domain are under the control of your service operators and platform operators. If your redirect URIs do not template according to your needs, reach out to your service operators and platform operators and request adjustments to the templates.

Redirect paths are one of the values for templating redirect URIs. However, there is another parameter that needs to be considered, which leads us to the next parameter.

workloadRef

workloadRef.name is the name of the workload which acts as the OAuth2 client. You can use this value when templating the fully-qualified domain name of your redirect URIs.

spec:
  parameters:
    workloadRef:
      name: my-workload

Therefore, if you rename your workload from my-workload to a different name, you must update this parameter to align with the new name.

Note

workloadRef is not resolved to an actual Workload existing on the cluster. This means that the claim does not depend on the existence of a Workload.

Display name

An optional field to designate a user-friendly display name for your registered client. The display name is rendered on the authorization scope consent page if the field .spec.parameters.requireUserConsent is toggled on.

The display name must be between 2 and 32 characters in length.

authorizationGrantTypes

In OAuth2, a grant type is the way your application obtains token from the authorization server. There are different grant types. Some of them allow your application to act on behalf of an end user, but others do not.

The authorizationGrantTypes parameter denotes all the grant types your application can use:

spec:
  parameters:
    authorizationGrantTypes:
      - client_credentials
      - authorization_code
      - refresh_token

Application Single Sign-On supports the following OAuth2 grant types:

  • Authorization Code: authorization_code

    Applications use this grant type to authenticate and authorize end users. An AuthServer issues identity and access tokens to applications to identify end users’ identities and their level of access to the protected resources.

  • Client Credentials: client_credentials

    Applications use this grant type to communicate directly to other protected applications throuhg a client identifier and a client secret. For example, in service-to-service communication, an AuthServer issues access tokens that define the level of access that the requesting service has to the protected service they seek to communicate with.

    Note

    Use cases for the grant type authorization_code and client_credentials are typically different, so VMware recommends creating separate client registrations for each grant type.

  • Refresh Token: refresh_token

    Applications use this grant type to obtain access tokens. If the refresh_token grant type is included, a refresh token is attached to every access token issued by an AuthServer. You can use the refresh token to fetch the new access tokens before the older ones expire to continue accessing the rotected resources.

Client authentication method

A client authentication method defines how your application presents its credentials to the authorization server.

spec:
  parameters:
    clientAuthenticationMethod: client_secret_basic

There are three client authentication methods:

  • client_secret_basic(default): Send the client credentials by using the HTTP “Basic” authentication scheme. This is the recommended method for authenticating server-based applications such as Spring Boot or .NET Core apps (confidential clients).
  • client_secret_post: Send the client credentials in the body of an HTTP POST request.
  • none: Do not send the client credentials. This is for browser-based single-page apps.

scopes

The scopes field defines the OAuth2 scopes requested by your application, including the standard OpenID claims.

spec:
  parameters:
    scopes:
      - name: openid # Standard OpenID scope, containing claims "sub" (subject), "aud" (audience) and so on.
      - name: email # Standard OpenID scope, containing claims "email" and "email_verified".
      - name: profile # Standard OpenID scope, containing claims "name", "given_name", "family_name" and so on.
      - name: roles # AppSSO special scope, requesting the user roles or groups be populated in the "roles" claim.
      - name: coffee.make # Custom the authorization scope.
        description: bestows the ultimate power # With a custom description.

To activate the issuance of the users’ identity tokens and authentication, you must include the openid scope.

To activate fetching of the user roles or groups, you must include the roles scope.

requireUserConsent

The requireUserConsent field defines the toggling scopes approved by the end users.

spec:
  parameters:
    requireUserConsent: true

If activated, the end users are prompted to consent to or reject the scopes that the client requests on behalf of them. If deactivated, all scopes that the client requests are auto-approved or consented to without prompting.

Behind the scenes

When you create a ClassClaim for an Application Single Sign-On service, several resources are created behind the scenes. These resources can be helpful for debugging purposes.

  • You create a ClassClaim for an Application Single Sign-On service with your parameters.
  • An XWorkloadRegistration with your parameters are created in the same namespace.
  • A WorkloadRegistration with your parameters are created in the same namespace. The WorkloadRegistration templates your redirect URIs.
  • A ClientRegistration with your parameters and the templated redirect URIs are created in the same namespace.
  • The ClientRegistration receives the client credentials and passes them all the way to your ClassClaim.

Loading client credentials into a Workload

Now that you have a client credentials for your application, you can reference the ClassClaim from your Workload.

An example Workload in my-apps namespace is as follows:

apiVersion: carto.run/v1alpha1
kind: Workload
metadata:
  labels:
    apps.tanzu.vmware.com/workload-type: web
  name: my-workload
  namespace: my-apps
spec:
  serviceClaims:
    - name: my-sso-client # Must match the name of the referenced `ClassClaim`.
      ref:
        apiVersion: services.apps.tanzu.vmware.com/v1alpha1
        kind: ClassClaim
        name: my-sso-claim
  #! ...

Alternatively, you can refer to your ClassClaim when deploying your workload with the Tanzu CLI:

tanzu apps workload create my-workload \
  --service-ref "my-sso-client=services.apps.tanzu.vmware.com/v1alpha1:ClassClaim:my-sso-claim" \
  # ...
Important

The service ref name must match the name of the referenced ClassClaim.

Thanks to service bindings, your credentials are provided to your Workload’s Pod (one or more) by mounting a volume containing your client credentials.

The credentials provided by the claim are:

  • client-id: The identifier of your Workload that Application Single Sign-On is registered with. This is a unique identifier.
  • client-secret: The secret string value used by Application Single Sign-On to verify your client. Keep this value secret.
  • issuer-uri: The web address of the Application Single Sign-On AuthServer and the primary location that your Workload goes to when interacting with Application Single Sign-On.
  • authorization-grant-types: A list of the desired OAuth 2 grant types.
  • client-authentication-method: The method in which the client is authenticated when requesting an identity or access token.
  • scope: A list of the desired scopes that your application’s users have access to.

These credentials are mounted onto your Workload’s Pod(one or more) as individual files at the following locations:

/bindings
  /<name-of-service-claim>
    /client-id
    /client-secret
    /issuer-uri
    /authorization-grant-types
    /client-authentication-method
    /scope

Following the earlier example, you can find the location of mounted credentials on every Pod at:

/bindings/my-sso-client

Given these auto-generated values, your Workload can now load them at runtime and bind to an Application Single Sign-On authorization server at startup time. Reading the values from the file system is left to the implementer.

Trusting an authorization server

Your application makes request to the authorization server. The authorization server serves traffic using TLS. If your company uses non-public certificate authority (CA), you must explicitly trust the authorization server or rather the certificate authority. For more information, see Configure Workloads to trust a custom certificate authority.

Summary

This concludes the tutorial explaining how to claim the client credentials for an Application Single Sign-On authorization server and how to secure a workload.

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