Configure OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication for Release

This topic describes how to configure Release authentication using the OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocol. OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an identity layer built on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol and supported by various OAuth 2.0 providers.

OIDC defines a sign-in flow that enables a client application to authenticate a user. User identity information is encoded in a secure JSON Web Token (JWT), called ID token.

You can log into Release using various Identity providers that support the OIDC authentication protocol, such as OKTA, Keycloak, and Azure Active Directory (Office 365).

You can easily add an additional layer of security for Release by enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Using MFA, and depending on your identity provider settings, users are required to acknowledge a verification phone call, text message, or app notification on their smart phones after correctly entering their passwords.

Requirements

Server requirements

• Release OIDC Authentication plugin installed

Client requirements

• Chrome
• Internet Explorer 11 or later
• Firefox

Setup

Login as an Internal User

The plugin offers a seamless user experience by automatically redirecting an unauthenticated user to the Identity Provider’s login page.

This does not allow you to sign in directly as an Internal User. If you want to sign in as an Internal User, you can browse directly to xl-release.example.com/login.

Notes:

• The xl-release.example.com/login page is also an entry point when a local account has an identical username with another user from your Identity Provider. The user is automatically redirected to the page with a corresponding message.
• OpenID Connect provider and Release instances should be time synchronized. For example, on NTP.

Server setup

On xl-release.example.com, follow the steps described in this section.

Step 1. Download and Install the plugin

The Release OIDC Authentication plugin is bundled with the distribution for Release 10.1.0 and later. You can also download it from the distribution site if required and follow install a plugin steps in Release.

Step 2. Configure the OIDC Authentication plugin

This step includes retrieving metadata, modifying the config file, and setting up the post-login URL.

Retrieve metadata using a discovery endpoint

The discovery endpoint is a static page that you use to retrieve metadata about your OIDC Identity Provider.

In most of the cases the discovery endpoint is available through /.well-known/openid-configuration relative to the base address of your Identity Provider.

For example: https://login.microsoftonline.com/xebialabs.com/.well-known/openid-configuration

The field names and values are defined in the OpenID Connect Discovery Specification.

In OIDC there are notions called scopes and claims that define the settings to obtain information about a specific user, such as the username, name, email, and group.

You can provide the required claims from the following configuration properties:

• rolesClaim - In Release, the OIDC roles become principals that you can assign to roles inside Release. Each time you login, the rolesClaim is matched to the principal assigned to the role in Release. This grants access according to the permissions of the role in Release.
• userNameClaim - Unique username for both internal and external users. You cannot sign in with a user if a local account with the same username exists.
• emailClaim - The email address is required to send notifications. For example, you can be notified when a task that is assigned to you starts.
• fullNameClaim - The full name of the user profile.
• externalIdClaim - A unique external ID such as the user’s employee ID or GitHub ID. This is an optional claim.

Notes:

• The userNameClaim, emailClaim, and fullNameClaim properties are used to create the user profile when you log on to Release for the first time. Thereafter, profile update happens every time the user logs on to Digital.ai Release. Roles are used dynamically.
• Optionally, you can also add the externalIdClaim—which can be the user’s employee ID or GitHub ID, for example—to the user profile.
• The fields described above must be present in the scopes that you can provide from scopes.
• The issuer, accessTokenUri, userAuthorizationUri, and logoutUri options are also usually presented in the JSON metadata that the Identity Provider server publishes at the discovery endpoint.
• The redirectUri endpoint must always point to the /oidc-login Release endpoint. The redirectUri is an endpoint where authentication responses can be sent and received by Release. It must exactly match one of the redirect_uris you registered in OKTA and Azure AD portal and it must be URL encoded. For Keycloak you can register a pattern for redirect_uri from the Keycloak Admin Panel (For example, you can provide a mask such as: http://example.com/mask** that matches http://example.com/mask/ or http://example.com/mask).

Modify the xl-release.conf file

To configure the OIDC Authentication plugin, modify the XL_RELEASE_SERVER_HOME/conf/xl-release.conf file by adding a xl.security.auth.providers section:

xl {
  security {
    auth {
      providers {
        oidc {
          clientId="<your client id here>"
          clientSecret="<your client secret here>"

          issuer="<OpenID Provider Issuer here>"        
          redirectUri="https://xl-release.example.com/oidc-login"
          postLogoutRedirectUri="https://xl-release.example.com/oidc-login"

          scopes=["<your>", "<scopes>", "<here>"]

          rolesClaim="<your roles claim here>"
          userNameClaim="<your username claim here>"
          emailClaim="<your email claim here>"
          fullNameClaim="<your fullName claim here>"
          externalIdClaim="<user's employee ID or GitHub ID, for example>" //This is an optional claim
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The above configuration will automatically fetches required configuration from the discovery endpoint. The discovery endpoint is a static page that you use to retrieve metadata about your OIDC Identity Provider.

In most of the cases, the discovery endpoint is available through /.well-known/openid-configuration relative to the base address of your Identity Provider. For example: https://login.microsoftonline.com/xebialabs.com/.well-known/openid-configuration.

For more information, see OpenID Connect Discovery Specification.

Override the values from the discovery endpoint

It is possible to override keyRetrievalUri, accessTokenUri, userAuthorizationUri, and logoutUri by adding those values explicitly. This is useful if discovery endpoint is not reachable.

xl {
  security {
    auth {
      providers {
        oidc {
          clientId="<your client id here>"
          clientSecret="<your client secret here>"
          clientAuthMethod="<your client authentication method here>"
          issuer="<OpenID Provider Issuer here>"        

          keyRetrievalUri="<The jwks_uri to retrieve keys>"
          accessTokenUri="<The redirect URI to use for returning the access token>"                  
          userAuthorizationUri="<The authorize endpoint to request tokens or authorization codes via the browser>"
          logoutUri="<The logout endpoint to revoke token via the browser>"

          redirectUri="https://xl-release.example.com/oidc-login"
          postLogoutRedirectUri="https://xl-release.example.com/oidc-login"

          scopes=["<your>", "<scopes>", "<here>"]
          idTokenJWSAlg="<The ID token signature verification algorithm>"

          rolesClaim="<your roles claim here>"
          userNameClaim="<your username claim here>"
          emailClaim="<your email claim here>"
          fullNameClaim="<your fullName claim here>"
          externalIdClaim="<user's employee ID or GitHub ID, for example>" //This is an optional claim          

          // proxyPort and proxyHost are optional parameters -
          // available in Release 8.2.0 and later.
          proxyHost="your-proxy-host-here.example.com"
          proxyPort="3128"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Setup the post-logout URL

The logout works by directing the user’s browser to the end-session endpoint of the OpenID Connect provider, with the logout request parameters encoded in the URL query string. If you need to redirect to the login page after logout, you can use your redirectUri as the postLogoutRedirectUri.

Client Authentication

Clients are required to authenticate against Authorization server when using the Token Endpoint. Below client authentication methods are currently supported:

By default, client_secret_post authentication method is used. You can also override default values as shown below.

xl {
  security {
    auth {
      providers {
        oidc {
          clientAuthMethod = "<Expected client authentication method>"
          ...
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

ID Token Signature Verification

The ID Token is represented as a JSON Web Token (JWT) and MUST be signed using JSON Web Signature (JWS).

Clients are required to validate ID Token. The default algorithm for signature verification is RS256. You can use idTokenJWSAlg parameter as described in above configuration file to set different value. Below JSON Web Algorithms (JWA) are currently supported:

Note: For MAC based algorithms such as HS256, HS384 or HS512, the clientSecret corresponding to the clientId is used as the symmetric key for signature verification.

Bearer Token Authentication for REST APIs

It is possible to use OAuth 2.0 token to access public REST APIs. By default, RS256 algorithm is used to validate the token. You can also override default values as shown below.

xl {
  security {
    auth {
      providers {
        oidc {
          ...
          access-token {
            issuer = "<Expected issuer 'iss' claim value>"
            audience = "<Expected audience 'aud' claim value>"
            keyRetrievalUri = "<The jwks_uri to retrieve keys for the token>"
            jwsAlg = "<The token signature verification algorithm>"
            secretKey = "<The secret key if MAC based algorithms is used for the token>"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Default values for access token configuration properties are described below:

Note: Token must contain userNameClaim and rolesClaim to map proper roles in release.

Disable OIDC Authentication

By default, Release checks for the path xl.security.auth.providers.oidc in xl-release.conf file. If it is present, Release will enable OIDC Authentication. You can also use below toggle to enable and disable the behaviour.

xl {
  security {
    auth {
      providers {
        oidc {
          enabled = true //false if you want to disable OIDC Authentication
          ...
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Integration with Keycloak Identity provider

Installing Keycloak

1. Download the latest version of Keycloak
2. Unpack the file, open a terminal window and go to the directory where you extracted the file.
3. Go to the bin directory and run standalone.sh.
4. By default, Keycloak runs on port 8080. Using your browser, navigate to that location and create an admin user (example: admin/admin).
5. When the admin user is created, go to the Administration Console.

Setting up configuration for Release in Keycloak

1. On the top left, navigate to Master, open the drop down menu, and click Add realm.
2. Set the name to XLRelease, and save it.
3. Set the Display name to Release.
4. On the sidebar, select Clients
5. Click create, set the client ID to Release Server, and click Save.
6. Set Access Type to Confidential, and add the URL to your Release server (for example: http://localhost:4516/) as Valid Redirect URI.

7. Click Save. A new Credentials tab appears.

   To add roles to Keycloak, select Roles on the sidebar. These will be mapped to the Release principals later. For example: If you create a user JohnDoe and you assign the role admins to the user, and in Release you assign admin permission to admins, then the JohnDoe user can log in as an admin in Release.

8. On the sidebar, under Users, click Add user. Set the username to JohnDoe and click Save.

9. Select the Credentials tab and specify a password.

   If you have created roles, go to the Role Mappings tab and add the desired roles.

10. Click Clients in the sidebar, go to the Mappers tab, and click Create.
11. Specify a name (for example: group memberships), set the Mapper Type to Group Membership, set the Token Claim Name to groups, and set the Add to ID Token to ON.

Integration with OKTA Identity provider

You can register an OAuth client by creating a new application integration from the OKTA Admin interface:

1. Log in to your OKTA organization as an administrator.
2. Click Admin.
3. From Shortcuts on the right side of the screen, click Add Applications.
4. Click Create New App on the left side of the screen.
5. Select OpenID Connect as the Sign on method.
6. Configure one or more Redirect URIs for your Release application.
7. Click Finish

Using the People or Groups tabs, assign people to your newly created Release application.

Note: Users cannot authenticate to your Release application if they are not assigned.

Find your Client ID in the Client Credentials section of the Groups tab. You will use the Client ID that you just obtained to configure the Release server as it was described above.

for more information on how to configure OKTA, refer to OKTA documentation.

Integration with Azure Active Directory (Office 365)

Register your application as described here and use https://login.microsoftonline.com/{your tenant id}/.well-known/openid-configuration to collect configurations.

Using OIDC with DevOps as Code

The DevOps as Code CLI is not compatible with OIDC’s authentication method. As a workaround, if your Release instance is configured to use OIDC, you can create a devops-as-code internal system user to work with the CLI.

Debugging

To enable extra debugging in case of any failures, modify logback.xml file and add below logger.

<logger name="org.springframework.security" level="debug" />