OAuth2

OAuth is a web authorisation protocol that allows "single sign on". It's key to note OAuth only provides authorisation, as the protocol in its default forms do not provide identity or authentication information. All that OAuth can provide is information that an entity is authorised for the requested resources.

OAuth can tie into extensions allowing an identity provider to reveal information about authorised sessions. This extends OAuth from an authorisation only system to a system capable of identity and authorisation. Two primary methods of this exist today: RFC7662 token introspection, and OpenID connect.

Resource Server and Clients

This is the resource that a user wants to access. Common examples could be Nextcloud, a Wiki, or a chat service. In these cases the service is both the client and the resource server within the OAuth2 workflow. We will refer to the combination of both client and resource server as a service.

It's important for you to know how your service will interact with OAuth2. For example, does it rely on OpenID connect for identity information, or does it support RFC7662 token introspection?

In general, Kanidm requires that your service supports three things:

• HTTP basic authentication to the authorisation server (Kanidm)

• PKCE S256 code verification (code_challenge_methods_supported)

• If it uses OIDC, ES256 for token signatures (id_token_signing_alg_values_supported)

If your service doesn't support PKCE or only supports RS256 token signatures, see extended options for legacy clients.

Kanidm issues tokens which are RFC 9068 JWTs, allowing service introspection.

Kanidm's OAuth2 URLs

Kanidm will expose its OAuth2 APIs at the following URLs, substituting :client_id: with an OAuth2 client ID.

OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0 URL (recommended)

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/openid/:client_id:/.well-known/openid-configuration

This document includes all the URLs and attributes an app needs to be able to authenticate using OIDC with Kanidm, except for the client_id and client_secret.

Use this document wherever possible, as it will allow you to easily build and/or configure an interoperable OIDC client without needing to code or configure anything special for Kanidm (or another provider).

Note: some apps automatically append /.well-known/openid-configuration to the end of an OIDC Discovery URL, so you may need to omit that.

RFC 8414 OAuth 2.0 Authorisation Server Metadata URL

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/openid/:client_id:/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server

User auth

https://idm.example.com/ui/oauth2

API auth

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/authorise

Note: "authorise" is spelled the British English (non-OED) way.

Token endpoint

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/token

RFC 7662 Token Introspection URL

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/token/introspect

RFC 7662 token revocation URL

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/token/revoke

OpenID Connect issuer URI

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/openid/:client_id:

OpenID Connect user info

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/openid/:client_id:/userinfo

Token signing public key

https://idm.example.com/oauth2/openid/:client_id:/public_key.jwk

Configuration

Create the Kanidm Configuration

By default, members of the system_admins or idm_hp_oauth2_manage_priv groups are able to create or manage OAuth2 client integrations.

You can create a new client by specifying its client name, application display name and the landing page (home page) of the client. The landing page is where users will be redirected to from the Kanidm application portal.

kanidm system oauth2 create <name> <displayname> <landing page url>
kanidm system oauth2 create nextcloud "Nextcloud Production" https://nextcloud.example.com

You must now configure the redirect URL where the application expects OAuth2 requests to be sent.

kanidm system oauth2 add-redirect-url <name> <redirect url>
kanidm system oauth2 add-redirect-url nextcloud https://nextcloud.example.com/oauth2/handler

You can create a scope map with:

kanidm system oauth2 update-scope-map <name> <kanidm_group_name> [scopes]...
kanidm system oauth2 update-scope-map nextcloud nextcloud_users email profile openid

kanidm system oauth2 update-scope-map nextcloud nextcloud_users openid

You can create a supplemental scope map with:

kanidm system oauth2 update-sup-scope-map <name> <kanidm_group_name> [scopes]...
kanidm system oauth2 update-sup-scope-map nextcloud nextcloud_admins admin

Once created you can view the details of the client.

kanidm system oauth2 get nextcloud
---
name: nextcloud
class: oauth2_resource_server
class: oauth2_resource_server_basic
class: object
displayname: Nextcloud Production
oauth2_rs_basic_secret: hidden
oauth2_rs_origin_landing: https://nextcloud.example.com
oauth2_rs_token_key: hidden

You can see the value of oauth2_rs_basic_secret with:

kanidm system oauth2 show-basic-secret nextcloud
---
<secret>

Configure the Client/Resource Server

On your client, you should configure the client ID as the name from Kanidm, and the password to be the value shown in oauth2_rs_basic_secret. Ensure that the code challenge/verification method is set to S256.

You should now be able to test authorisation to the client.

Scope Relationships

For an authorisation to proceed, the client will request a list of scopes. For example, when a user wishes to login to the admin panel of the resource server, it may request the "admin" scope from Kanidm for authorisation. But when a user wants to login, it may only request "access" as a scope from Kanidm.

As each service may have its own scopes and understanding of these, Kanidm isolates scopes to each service connected to Kanidm. Kanidm has two methods of granting scopes to accounts (users).

The first is scope mappings. These provide a set of scopes if a user is a member of a specific group within Kanidm. This allows you to create a relationship between the scopes of a service, and the groups/roles in Kanidm which can be specific to that service.

For an authorisation to proceed, all scopes requested by the client must be available in the final scope set that is granted to the account.

The second part is supplemental scope mappings. These function the same as scope maps where membership of a group provides a set of scopes to the account. However these scopes are NOT consulted during authorisation decisions made by Kanidm. These scopes exist to allow optional properties to be provided (such as personal information about a subset of accounts to be revealed) or so that the service may make its own authorisation decisions based on the provided scopes.

This use of scopes is the primary means to control who can access what resources. These access decisions can take place either on Kanidm or the service.

For example, if you have a client that always requests a scope of "read", then users with scope maps that supply the read scope will be allowed by Kanidm to proceed to the service. Kanidm can then provide the supplementary scopes into provided tokens, so that the service can use these to choose if it wishes to display UI elements. If a user has a supplemental "admin" scope, then that user may be able to access an administration panel of the service. In this way Kanidm is still providing the authorisation information, but the control is then exercised by the service.

Public Client Configuration

Some applications are unable to provide client authentication. A common example is single page web applications that act as the OAuth2 client and its corresponding webserver is the resource server. In this case, the SPA is unable to act as a confidential client since the basic secret would need to be embedded in every client.

Another common example is native applications that use a redirect to localhost. These can't have a client secret embedded, so must act as public clients.

Public clients for this reason require PKCE to bind a specific browser session to its OAuth2 exchange. PKCE can not be disabled for public clients for this reason.

To create an OAuth2 public client:

kanidm system oauth2 create-public <name> <displayname> <origin>
kanidm system oauth2 create-public mywebapp "My Web App" https://webapp.example.com

To allow localhost redirection

kanidm system oauth2 enable-localhost-redirects <name>
kanidm system oauth2 disable-localhost-redirects <name>
kanidm system oauth2 enable-localhost-redirects mywebapp

Alternate Redirect URLs

Some services may have a website URL as well as native applications with opaque origins. These native applications require alternate redirection URLs to be configured so that after an OAuth2 exchange, the system can redirect to the native application.

To support this Kanidm allows supplemental opaque origins to be configured on clients.

kanidm system oauth2 add-redirect-url <name> <url>
kanidm system oauth2 remove-redirect-url <name> <url>

kanidm system oauth2 add-redirect-url nextcloud app://ios-nextcloud

Supplemental URLs are shown in the OAuth2 client configuration in the oauth2_rs_origin attribute.

Strict Redirect URLs

Kanidm previously enforced that redirection targets only matched by origin, not the full URL. In 1.4.0 these URLs will enforce a full URL match instead.

To indicate your readiness for this transition, all OAuth2 clients must have the field strict-redirect-url enabled. Once enabled, the client will begin to enforce the 1.4.0 strict validation behaviour.

If you have not enabled strict-redirect-url on all OAuth2 clients the upgrade to 1.4.0 will refuse to proceed.

To enable or disable strict validation:

kanidm system oauth2 enable-strict-redirect-url <name>
kanidm system oauth2 disable-strict-redirect-url <name>

Extended Options for Legacy Clients

Not all clients support modern standards like PKCE or ECDSA. In these situations it may be necessary to disable these on a per-client basis. Disabling these on one client will not affect others. These settings are explained in detail in our FAQ

To disable PKCE for a confidential client:

kanidm system oauth2 warning-insecure-client-disable-pkce <client name>

To use the legacy RSA PKCS1-5 SHA256 cryptographic algorithm (id_token_signing_alg_values_supported = RS256):

kanidm system oauth2 warning-enable-legacy-crypto <client name>

In this mode, Kanidm will not offer ES256 support for the client at all.

Resetting Client Security Material

In the case of disclosure of the basic secret or some other security event where you may wish to invalidate a services active sessions/tokens. You can reset the secret material of the server with:

kanidm system oauth2 reset-secrets

Each client has unique signing keys and access secrets, so this is limited to each service.