I'm just starting to learn micro services but there is something that I can't seem to grasp my mind around.
Let's say that I have multiple applications accessible to the clients. These apps all speak to multiple APIs (or services).
I then want to create an API Gateway that's going to route all of the requests from these apps to the APIs.
What I can't understand in this scenario is: How does the authentication work in this case ?
Should all the applications be "known" to the API Gateway so that I am sure that the requests that my Gateway receives are all coming from valid apps ?
Should the user authentication of the apps be performed on the API Gateway directly ? If so, how am I supposed to identify which app they are coming from ? Because, of course, even if a user is authenticated I don't want to give him access to the other apps's APIs..
Related
We are trying to build an API gateway in front of our application (we may split the application to micro services ASAP), and we meet some problems.
1 - different API types.
There are two kinds APIs in our application, most of them will be used by ourselves(user login/logout, news add/remove), we call them Self-used API here. And some of APIs will be allowed to used by third party, we call them Open API here.
Should all of them get through the gateway?
2 - different authentication
Self-used API may require the user login-ed or have related permissions, the Open API will require the third-party app take a key which we will use to identify and limit the request rate.
Should all kinds of authentication completed in the gateway? If yes, the Self-used api authentication is business related, does it mean that this api gateway can not be shared by other application?
Furthermore, the third-party developer will create their application and get a key back, they can also update/remove the apps(Something like Google API Console).
I am not sure if this should be put in the gateway or another micro-service. IMO, I prefer to put these features in a new service, but the validation and rate limit is done in gateway, that means for each request, gateway will have to query the user, rate limit and other information by the key from the service, this will make the gateway coupled with the business again.
There are quite a few ways of implementing an API Gateway. You can use different endpoints with a single API gateway. Here are a few links that are relevant
Serverless blog "How to deploy multiple micro-services under one API domain with Serverless" https://serverless.com/blog/api-gateway-multiple-services/
Nginx "Do You Really Need Different Kinds of API Gateways? (Hint: No!)" https://www.nginx.com/blog/do-you-really-need-different-kinds-of-api-gateways-hint-no/
Sentialabs.io "Amazon API Gateway types, use cases and performance" https://www.sentialabs.io/2018/09/13/API-Gateway-Types-Compared.html
AWS API Gateway FAQs https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/faqs/
Think about the types of features you are trying to accomplish with your approach, and how API Gateway will help you address them.
I plan to use Kong in our project. I'm currently working on a POC to see how we can integrate it in our platform as the main API gateway. I also want to use the JWT plugin for authentication and authorisation. I know that all the API calls should go through the Kong gateway to be authenticated. Then, if the authentication is validated they can go to the API.
Clients ---> Kong gateway ----> Apis
The part that is not very clear in my mind is how the APIs and Kong fit together.
Imagine a scenario where a client try to call directly an API with a token (bypassing the Gateway). How can the API use Kong to validate this token ?
How does Kong authenticates the APIs (not the Client) ? In the examples I have seen so far, only the authentication of the clients is documented, not the authentication of the APIs that are "protected" by Kong.
When using kong as an API Gateway (or for that matter any gateway) we tend to put it at the point where external clients talk to your service. It is a means to discover the individual services. And kong can do good enough job to validate such request.
For the calls you make to other services from within your set of microservices, you may allow for the free passage by means of directly invoking the service. Challenge in that case will be how the services will discover each other. (One way is to rely on DNS entries. We used to do that but later moved to kubernetes and started using their service discovery), and restrict all the incoming traffic to a given service from outside world. So they can only get in via gateway (and thats where we have all the security)
The reason behind the above philosophy is that we trust the services we have created (This may or may not be true for you and if its not then you need to route all your traffic via an api gateway and consider your APIs as just another client and they need to get hold of access token to proceed further or may be have another service discovery for internal traffic)
Or you may write a custom plugin in kong that filters out all the traffic that originates from within your subnet and validates everything else.
I´m need to create a web api with net.core for a mobile (Ionic) app.
Part of this app, do not need be authenticated to see a list of products.
My problem is:
I need to create a web api, to list this products but, the user do not need to login on app, but I´d like that my application could consume this api and not be open to all (just my app can consume).
It is possible? If yes, what I need to do?
Thanks
The only way you can do make the API available to your application without exposing it to the world sans auth, is to keep it internal, i.e. on the same LAN as your website and behind a firewall. This is generally the preferred approach, anyways, if it's not for public consumption as if it's public at all, there's always some potential for breach, whether authentication is required or not.
The one downside to this approach, though, is that you cannot utilize then for any external communication - things like AJAX or in your scenario a mobile application. As a result, if you need to be able to access it via mobile apps, you cannot implement it this way, which then means you must implement an authentication layer to protect it. There is no other alternative.
You can also do a kind of hybrid approach, as well. If there's certain API endpoints that should never be accessed publicly, you can split your API app up into external and internal portions and then keep the internal stuff internal, only exposing the APIs that are absolutely necessary for mobile app functionality. Again, though, for anything that is public, you'll need to implement an authentication layer or it will be wide open.
That said, the authentication doesn't have to be end-user authentication. You just need to authorize your mobile application as a client. Typically, you'd do that via client secret auth, where the application is given a client id and a secret. The client submits that to an auth endpoint and gets back a token. That token is then passed in the Authorization header for requests that require it. All that remains seamless to your end-user, requiring no actual physical login on their part.
I'm new to web services and am creating HTTP services using .NET Web API 2.
The consumers of the services will be other applications, but in the future I foresee web applications (browsers, mobile apps) using them. The services simply serve data to the consumers (no create/update/delete).
All applications, including the API, are located on our enterprise intranet. Nothing outward facing.
I was told to use Integrated Windows Authentication for the services. Can an API key also be used on the same services to authenticate the application that is making the calls?
I'm not even sure doing this makes sense. Can the consuming application (i.e executable run on a server) send account info? My thought is that Windows Authentication isn't necessary and token authentication will suffice. Others have told me to use both. I'm not sure that's possible and haven't found anything showing me it is.
An API key is a parameter passed to the service interface, so it can be passed with any type of auth on the backend.
But usually, and api key is used to determine whether a user is allowed to use a specific API. For example, if only a subset of users that have windows accounts are allowed to use the api, then maybe that might make sense, because, even if they could authenticate with their windows account, they could still be determined to be unauthorized by the fact that they did not pass a valid auth key.
That said, you could also do the same things with some kind of policy, for example, checking if the user has the correct role to call the api method. It makes more sense when you are giving people access to an api through the internet.
I am starting a new web project and I intend to make it API based; that is I want to build the API first, authenticated via OAuth, then build a website and possibly mobile app(s) that use the API to handle data. I also have my eye on opening up the API to the public.
Here is my issue; I am struggling to get my head around how to authenticate these 'official' apps, the ones made by me, including the main site.
In OAuth the client creates an account for each user then seeks access rights via the resource owner logging in at the main site. This obviously does not work for me because the main site and the client are the same place and it also implies my users should be creating two accounts just to use my website...
I believe twitter uses its own API to run twitter.com and I get the impression that this approach is becoming quite normal so there must be a standard approach.
I must be missing something, but what?
You are confusing the API (business logic) with the authenticaton of user identity (for example logging in), and the authorization of third party apps (OAuth).
It is correct that twitter.com uses their own API. But they don't use OAuth on their own site. When you're on twitter.com, their APIs are available to themselves over cookie authentication. To put it simply: you're logged in.
Once you move away from twitter.com you have to use OAuth. Now an application is using the API on behalf of a user.
To sum up. You don't specifically need OAuth for your "own" web client to use your own APIs. You need OAuth, or some other authorization mechanism, to publish your APIs and it will also come in handy for your own "official" apps.
There is really no need to distinguish your own official apps from third party apps. Not from a technological perspective anyway.
Host two versions of the "API". One mapped to the external domain api.yoursite.com and it OAuth-enabled to authenticate all requests. The other internal version is accessible only within your pool of servers, your official apps. Since only your official apps can access it in the first place, consider all requests to the internal API trusted.
If you want the same application to manage both external and internal calls, you can choose to
distinguish external and internal requests based on incoming IP addresses
implement your API to accept one of "VIP passes" or OAuth tokens for authentications. External apps use OAuth tokens to perform actions on behalf of certain users. Official apps use "VIP passes" to perform actions on behalf of any user.