Using OAuth2 proxy for Kubernetes Dashboard

OAuth2-proxy was once a bit.ly project, but was officially archived in Sept 2018. It lives on though, at https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy.

OAuth2-proxy is a lightweight proxy which you put in front of your vulnerable services, enforcing an OAuth authentication against an impressive collection of providers (including generic OIDC) before the backend service is displayed to the calling user.

This recipe will describe setting up OAuth2 Proxy for the purposes of passing authentication headers to Kubernetes Dashboard, which doesn't provide its own authentication, but instead relies on Kubernetes' own RBAC auth.

In order to view your Kubernetes resources on the dashboard, you either create a fully-privileged service account (yuk! ), copy and paste your own auth token upon login (double yuk! ), or use OAuth2 Proxy to authenticate against the kube-apiserver on your behalf, and pass the authentication token to Kubernetes Dashboard (like a boss! )

If you're after a generic authentication middleware which doesn't need to pass OAuth headers, then Traefik Forward Auth is a better option, since it supports multiple backends in "auth host" mode.

OAuth2 Proxy requirements

Preparation

OAuth2 Proxy Namespace

We need a namespace to deploy our HelmRelease and associated YAMLs into. Per the flux design, I create this example yaml in my flux repo at /bootstrap/namespaces/namespace-kubernetes-dashboard.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-dashboard

OAuth2 Proxy HelmRepository

We're going to install the OAuth2 Proxy helm chart from the oauth2-proxy repository, so I create the following in my flux repo (assuming it doesn't already exist):

apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: oauth2-proxy
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 15m
  url: https://oauth2-proxy.github.io/manifests/

OAuth2 Proxy Kustomization

Now that the "global" elements of this deployment (just the HelmRepository in this case) have been defined, we do some "flux-ception", and go one layer deeper, adding another Kustomization, telling flux to deploy any YAMLs found in the repo at /kubernetes-dashboard/. I create this example Kustomization in my flux repo:

apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: oauth2-proxy
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 30m
  path: ./kubernetes-dashboard
  prune: true # remove any elements later removed from the above path
  timeout: 10m # if not set, this defaults to interval duration, which is 1h
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: flux-system
  healthChecks:
    - apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2beta1
      kind: HelmRelease
      name: oauth2-proxy
      namespace: kubernetes-dashboard

OAuth2 Proxy HelmRelease

Lastly, having set the scene above, we define the HelmRelease which will actually deploy oauth2-proxy into the cluster. We start with a basic HelmRelease YAML, like this example:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2beta1
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: oauth2-proxy
  namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
spec:
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: oauth2-proxy
      version: 6.18.x # auto-update to semver bugfixes only (1)
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository
        name: oauth2-proxy
        namespace: flux-system
  interval: 15m
  timeout: 5m
  releaseName: oauth2-proxy
  values: # paste contents of upstream values.yaml below, indented 4 spaces (2)

1. I like to set this to the semver minor version of the OAuth2 Proxy current helm chart, so that I'll inherit bug fixes but not any new features (since I'll need to manually update my values to accommodate new releases anyway)
2. Paste the full contents of the upstream values.yaml here, indented 4 spaces under the values: key

If we deploy this helmrelease as-is, we'll inherit every default from the upstream OAuth2 Proxy helm chart. That's probably hardly ever what we want to do, so my preference is to take the entire contents of the OAuth2 Proxy helm chart's values.yaml, and to paste these (indented), under the values key. This means that I can then make my own changes in the context of the entire values.yaml, rather than cherry-picking just the items I want to change, to make future chart upgrades simpler.

Then work your way through the values you pasted, and change any which are specific to your configuration.

Configure OAuth2 Proxy

The following sections detail suggested changes to the values pasted into /kubernetes-dashboard/helmrelease-oauth2-proxy.yaml from the OAuth2 Proxy helm chart's values.yaml. The values are already indented correctly to be copied, pasted into the HelmRelease, and adjusted as necessary.

OAuth2 Proxy Config

Set your clientID and clientSecret to match what you've setup in your OAuth provider. You can choose whatever you like for your cookieSecret!

    config:
      # Add config annotations
      annotations: {}
      # OAuth client ID
      clientID: "XXXXXXX"
      # OAuth client secret
      clientSecret: "XXXXXXXX"
      # Create a new secret with the following command
      # openssl rand -base64 32 | head -c 32 | base64
      # Use an existing secret for OAuth2 credentials (see secret.yaml for required fields)
      # Example:
      # existingSecret: secret
      cookieSecret: "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
      # The name of the cookie that oauth2-proxy will create
      # If left empty, it will default to the release name
      cookieName: ""
      google: {}
        # adminEmail: xxxx
        # useApplicationDefaultCredentials: true
        # targetPrincipal: xxxx
        # serviceAccountJson: xxxx
        # Alternatively, use an existing secret (see google-secret.yaml for required fields)
        # Example:
        # existingSecret: google-secret
        # groups: []
        # Example:
        #  - group1@example.com
        #  - group2@example.com
      # Default configuration, to be overridden
      configFile: |-
        email_domains = [ "*" ] # (1)!
        upstreams = [ "http://kubernetes-dashboard" ] # (2)!

1. Accept any emails passed to us by the auth provider, which we fully control. You might do this differently if you were using an auth provider like Google or GitHub
2. Set upstreams[] to match the backend service you want to protect, in this case, the kubernetes-dashboard service in the same namespace. ¹

Set ExtraArgs

Take note of the following, specifically:

extraArgs:
  provider: oidc
  provider-display-name: "Authentik"
  skip-provider-button: "true"
  pass-authorization-header: "true" # (1)!
  redis-connection-url: "redis://redis-master" # if you want to use redis
  session-store-type: redis # alternative is to use cookies
  cookie-refresh: 15m

1. This is critically important, and is what makes OAuth2 Proxy suited to this task. We need the authorization headers produced from the OIDC transaction to be passed to Kubernetes Dashboard, so that it can interact with kube-apiserver on our behalf.

Setup Ingress

Now you'll need an ingress, but note that this'll be the ingress you'll want to use for the Kubernetes Dashboard, so you'll want something like the following:

    ingress:
      enabled: true
      className: nginx
      path: /
      # Only used if API capabilities (networking.k8s.io/v1) allow it
      pathType: ImplementationSpecific
      # Used to create an Ingress record.
      hosts:
        - kubernetes-dashboard.example.com

Install OAuth2 Proxy!

Commit the changes to your flux repository, and either wait for the reconciliation interval, or force a reconcilliation using flux reconcile source git flux-system. You should see the kustomization appear...

~ ❯ flux get kustomizations oauth2-proxy
NAME        READY   MESSAGE                         REVISION        SUSPENDED
oauth2-proxy    True    Applied revision: main/70da637  main/70da637    False
~ ❯

The helmrelease should be reconciled...

~ ❯ flux get helmreleases -n kubernetes-dashboard oauth2-proxy
NAME        READY   MESSAGE                             REVISION    SUSPENDED
oauth2-proxy    True    Release reconciliation succeeded    v6.18.x     False
~ ❯

And you should have happy pods in the kubernetes-dashboard namespace:

~ ❯ k get pods -n kubernetes-dashboard -l app.kubernetes.io/name=oauth2-proxy
NAME                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
oauth2-proxy-7c94b7446d-nwsss   1/1     Running   0          5m14s
~ ❯

Is it working?

Browse to the URL you configured in your ingress above, and confirm that you're prompted to log into your OIDC provider.

Summary

What have we achieved? We're half-way to getting Kubernetes Dashboard working against our OIDC-enabled cluster. We've got OAuth2 Proxy authenticating against our OIDC provider, and passing on the auth headers to the upstream.

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OAuth2 Proxy resources 📝

• OAuth2 Proxy (official site)

• OAuth2 Proxy GitHub Repo

• OAuth2 Proxy Helm Chart

• OAuth2 Proxy GitHub Repo

• OAuth2 Proxy Helm Chart

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