kauthproxy

This is a kubectl plugin of the authentication proxy to access Kubernetes Dashboard.

You can access Kubernetes Dashboard with your credentials instead of entering a service account token. It provides better user experience and security.

kauthproxy supports the following environments:

• Amazon EKS
• Azure Kubernetes Service (with Azure AD)
• Self-hosted Kubernetes cluster
  • OpenID Connect tokens authentication
  • Webhook token authentication
  • aws-iam-authenticator

Note that kauthproxy does not work with client certificate authentication.

Getting Started

Install

Install the latest release from Homebrew, Krew or GitHub Releases.

# Homebrew (macOS)
brew install int128/kauthproxy/kauthproxy

# Krew (macOS, Linux and Windows)
kubectl krew install auth-proxy

You can deploy the manifest of Kubernetes Dashboard from here.

Run

To access Kubernetes Dashboard in your cluster:

% kubectl auth-proxy -n kubernetes-dashboard https://kubernetes-dashboard.svc
Starting an authentication proxy for pod/kubernetes-dashboard-57fc4fcb74-jjg77:8443
Open http://127.0.0.1:18000
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:57866 -> 8443
Forwarding from [::1]:57866 -> 8443

It will automatically open the browser. You can see Kubernetes Dashboard logged in as you.

How it works

Authentication

Kubernetes Dashboard supports header based authentication. kauthproxy forwards HTTP requests from the browser to Kubernetes Dashboard.

Take a look at the diagram:

When you access Kubernetes Dashboard, kauthproxy forwards HTTP requests by the following process:

1. Acquire your token from the credential plugin or authentication provider.
2. Set authorization: bearer TOKEN header to a request and forward the request to the pod.

Authorization

kauthproxy requires the following privileges:

• Get the Service of Kubernetes Dashboard.
• List the Pods of Kubernetes Dashboard.
• Port-forward to the Pod of Kubernetes Dashboard.

If you need to assign the least privilege for production, see an example of Role.

Usage

Usage:
  kubectl auth-proxy POD_OR_SERVICE_URL [flags]

Flags:
      --add_dir_header                   If true, adds the file directory to the header
      --address stringArray              The address on which to run the proxy. If set multiple times, it will try binding the address in order (default [127.0.0.1:18000,127.0.0.1:28000])
      --alsologtostderr                  log to standard error as well as files
      --as string                        Username to impersonate for the operation
      --as-group stringArray             Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.
      --cache-dir string                 Default HTTP cache directory (default "~/.kube/http-cache")
      --certificate-authority string     Path to a cert file for the certificate authority
      --client-certificate string        Path to a client certificate file for TLS
      --client-key string                Path to a client key file for TLS
      --cluster string                   The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use
      --context string                   The name of the kubeconfig context to use
  -h, --help                             help for kubectl
      --insecure-skip-tls-verify         If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure
      --kubeconfig string                Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.
      --log_backtrace_at traceLocation   when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace (default :0)
      --log_dir string                   If non-empty, write log files in this directory
      --log_file string                  If non-empty, use this log file
      --log_file_max_size uint           Defines the maximum size a log file can grow to. Unit is megabytes. If the value is 0, the maximum file size is unlimited. (default 1800)
      --logtostderr                      log to standard error instead of files (default true)
  -n, --namespace string                 If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request
      --request-timeout string           The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don't timeout requests. (default "0")
  -s, --server string                    The address and port of the Kubernetes API server
      --skip-open-browser                If set, skip opening the browser
      --skip_headers                     If true, avoid header prefixes in the log messages
      --skip_log_headers                 If true, avoid headers when opening log files
      --stderrthreshold severity         logs at or above this threshold go to stderr (default 2)
      --token string                     Bearer token for authentication to the API server
      --user string                      The name of the kubeconfig user to use
  -v, --v Level                          number for the log level verbosity
      --version                          version for kubectl
      --vmodule moduleSpec               comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging

Contributions

This is an open source software. Feel free to open issues and pull requests.

End-to-end test

To provision a cluster:

# requires Docker, Kind and Chrome
brew cask install docker google-chrome
brew install kind

# provision a cluster and deploy Kubernetes Dashboard
make -C e2e_test deploy

You can access the cluster as follows:

export KUBECONFIG=e2e_test/output/kubeconfig.yaml

# show all pods
kubectl get pods -A

# open Kubernetes Dashboard
./kauthproxy -n kubernetes-dashboard --user=tester https://kubernetes-dashboard.svc

To run the automated test:

make -C e2e_test test

To delete the cluster.

make -C e2e_test delete-cluster