Hi Pedro
Thanks for the clarification.
The scopes are not really a result of user concent, but rather just a request for the
right amount of permissions.
A user can ask for as much permission he needs by using the scope. So if the SPA needs
read and create permission for items, the scope can be “openid read:items create:items”.
If the user can only read items, eventually the resulting scope should be “openid
read:items” and the backend can block create calls.
I saw some people create roles for every scope and then use composite roles to for example
create “admin” users with the right roles for the scopes. Is this the right way to do
this?
An item is assigned to a customer (and a user is assigned to a customer), so my-api still
needs to filter on that so that users can only read items from their own customer. Is this
a use case where the fine-grained authorization of Keycloak comes into play? We’d need to
create an item resource in Keycloak for every item in our database, right? And then use
UMA to check the access to a particular item?
We could also just add the customer as a claim in the token and use that to filter our
database (but like you said then my-api does the authorization). I think this is the way
to go for our case at the moment, as we already have an existing system where it happens
like this. So it requires minimal refactoring.
As of now, we’re not using any adapters yet. Most of our backend processes are in Node.js
btw. But we’re also checking out Kong as an API gateway to use, so we could use an OIDC
plugin that communicates with Keycloak if needed.
Thanks a lot
Dean
Van: Pedro Igor Silva <psilva(a)redhat.com>
Verzonden: maandag 30 juli 2018 17:52
Aan: Wyns Dean <dean.wyns(a)aptus.be>
CC: keycloak-user(a)lists.jboss.org
Onderwerp: Re: [keycloak-user] FW: Access control and client setup
On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 10:43 AM, Wyns Dean
<dean.wyns@aptus.be<mailto:dean.wyns@aptus.be>> wrote:
Hi Pedro
Thanks for your answer.
So the idea is to create one client for the API, let’s call it “my-api” with authorization
enabled and the resources/scopes/permissions like you described previously. And I’ll
create another (public) client for the SPA, “my-app”.
If users authenticate against my-app using the implicit flow, how can I link the scopes
associated with the resources of my-api and have them follow the permissions that are
defined on my-api? Do I have to add the scopes as optional “Client Scopes” so they are
shared? The problem then is that they don’t show up under the Authorization tab of my-api,
only the Authorization Scopes do. Or should authorization be enabled for my-app as well?
Client Scopes and Authorization tabs are different features. The first provides an
authorization model based on OAuth2 scopes, where scopes may map to one or more claims
inside your token or even restrict the roles you send n the token. They are also related
with user consent.
The Authorization provides you the necessary means to setup resource-based permissions
using different access control mechanisms. It also provides privacy based on user-managed
access.
I would like the backend to purely check on the scope associated with the access token, by
looking at the scope claim. There doesn’t seem to ever be a permissions claim in my tests,
I only get the “resource_access” claim but that only contains the roles, which I don’t
need in the backend.
Are these scopes a result of user consent ? Or do you need more fine-grained control and
externalize authorization from my-api ?
Are you using a specific Keycloak adapter ? (wildfly, spring, etc)
Sorry if I’m being unclear.
Your help is highly appreciated!
Dean
Van: Pedro Igor Silva <psilva@redhat.com<mailto:psilva@redhat.com>>
Verzonden: donderdag 26 juli 2018 14:00
Aan: Wyns Dean <dean.wyns@aptus.be<mailto:dean.wyns@aptus.be>>
CC: keycloak-user@lists.jboss.org<mailto:keycloak-user@lists.jboss.org>
Onderwerp: Re: [keycloak-user] FW: Access control and client setup
On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 4:21 AM, Wyns Dean
<dean.wyns@aptus.be<mailto:dean.wyns@aptus.be>> wrote:
Hi
I'm evaluating Keycloak as our IAM and SSO and it seems very powerful, but I can't
seem to wrap my head around some things.
We want to separate our APIs from the IAM. The sole purpose of Keycloak is to provide an
identity and access token, primarily using the implicit flow. The client-side application
(usually SPAs) uses the access token in all API calls and the resource server checks the
signature of the access token but does not access Keycloak at all.
Each backend has a few operations, and each operation gets its own "permission".
For example one API can manage "items", so there are four permissions:
- create:item
- read:item
- update:item
- delete:item
Is it best practice with Keycloak to model these permissions as scopes? And then use
roles/permissions/policies to limit the scope of the user? The backend can then just
decode the access token and read the granted scopes.
Ideally, you should define your authorization settings based on on your model. So if you
have a resource "Item", which is a protected resource in your API you should
have a "Item Resource" in Keycloak. The actions/methods create, read, update and
delete can be scopes associated with your "Item" resource.
Once you have your item resource and scopes, you can define permissions that govern access
for the resource itself or for each scope individually. All depends on how you create
those permissions (resource vs scope permissions) and policies associated with them.
The backend could just decode the token and check for the "permissions" claim.
Or you can also query the Keycloak server on every request to obtain a decision.
Also, in a SPA + API set-up, do I create two clients in Keycloak, one for each? This is
only useful when the API needs resource protection, right? I guess in my case I only need
one client for the SPA because the API only needs the scope from the access token by
decoding it.
I would say you should have two clients representing both applications. They have
different requirements and are really different things. Your SPA is probably a reguar
public client while your API is a resource server.
Thanks for any feedback
Kind regards
Dean
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