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Proof of Concept for an Auth Gateway for SPA

... aka Auth Reverse Proxy ... aka Backend for Frontend (BFF) ... aka Forward Authentication Service ...

All requests are tunneled through the Auth Gateway

This gateway shifts the use of security standards such as OAuth2 and OpenId Connect to the server side. This drastically simplifies the implementation of the SPA and makes your solution more secure.

🔥 Features

  • ☑️ Easily implementing Authentication, Authorization, and SSO for SPAs (e. g. Angular) by making this gateway taking care of the heavy lifting on the serve side

  • ☑️ Tokens (id_token, access_token, refresh_token) are only stored on server-side in order to increase security

  • ☑️ Uses OAuth 2 and OpenId Connect (OIDC)

  • ☑️ Successfully tested with Keycloak, Azure Active Directory, Auth0, and Identity Server

  • ☑️ Supports Token Exchange (RFC 8693) and as an alternative Azure AD's OBO-Flow (On-Behalf-of flow)

  • ☑️ Opaque handling of XSRF tokens. Angular apps will use them automatically.

  • ☑️ login, logout, and userinfo endpoints for SPA

  • ☑️ Lots of further features by leveraging Microsoft's YARP Reverse Proxy (e. g. Loading Balancing, Health Checks, Distributed Tracing)

  • ☑️ Configuration via appsettings.json

  • ☑️ Follows current best practices and is hence prepared for the upcoming OAuth 2.1

⚡️ Live-Demo

see https://demo-auth-gateway.azurewebsites.net

Demo-Client

The used demo client literally doesn't do a thing regarding security. It relays on the gateway and assumes that the gateway provides the following local paths:

  • /login: (Re)login the user
  • /logout: Logout the user
  • /userinfo: Get info about the user as a JSON document (e. g. given_name)
  • /api: Assess to the API. The gateway forwards the access_token

Please find the source code of the demo client here:

https://github.com/manfredsteyer/auth-gateway-client

Running the Auth Gateway in Docker

docker compose up

In the docker-compose.yml, you can adjust the configuration to use (e. g. for Keycloak, Azure AD, etc; see next section).

Running the Auth Gateway Locally

  1. Get .NET 6 for Windows, Linux, or Mac
  2. Call dotnet restore in the project's root to download all libs
  3. Call dotnet run in the project's root to start the reverse proxy
  4. Call the Demo App via http://localhost:5123 (please find the actual used port number on the console)

Also, have a look into the appsettings.json.

Using the Demo Configuration for Keycloak

Username/Password: jane/jane

This configuration uses token exchange:

dotnet run conf\appsettings.keycloak.json

Using the Demo Configuration for Azure AD

Username/Password: You can login with your Microsoft account.

dotnet run conf\appsettings.azure.json

Using the Demo Configuration for Auth0

Username/Password: You can login with your Google account.

Auth0 does current not support token exchange.

dotnet run conf\appsettings.auth0.json

Using the Demo Configuration for Identity Server

Identity Server supports token exchange via an extension. Also, Identity Server comes with such a security gateway (Backend for Frontend, BFF).

However, in our free demo, we didn't configure token exchange so far.

Username/Password: bob/bob or alice/alice

dotnet run conf\appsettings.identity-server.json

Further Readings

YARP

This implementation uses Microsoft's YARP (Yet Another Reverse Proxy).

And the good message is: YARP can do so much more. Load balancing, health checking, and distributed tracing are just some examples.

OAuth 2.0 for Browser-Based Apps

The OAuth 2 working group is current working on a best practices document called OAuth 2.0 for Browser-Based Apps. It will very likely be incorporated in the upcoming OAuth 2.1 standard and proposes the use of auth gateways (they call it "backend for frontend" or BFF) like this here.