Copy JWT Claims to HTTP Headers

This task shows you how to copy valid JWT claims to HTTP headers after JWT authentication is successfully completed via an Istio request authentication policy.

Before you begin

Before you begin this task, do the following:

  • Familiarize yourself with Istio end user authentication support.

  • Install Istio using Istio installation guide.

  • Deploy httpbin and sleep workloads in namespace foo with sidecar injection enabled. Deploy the example namespace and workloads using these commands:

    ZipZip
    $ kubectl create ns foo
    $ kubectl label namespace foo istio-injection=enabled
    $ kubectl apply -f @samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml@ -n foo
    $ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@ -n foo
    
  • Verify that sleep successfully communicates with httpbin using this command:

    $ kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -n foo -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c sleep -n foo -- curl http://httpbin.foo:8000/ip -sS -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n"
    200
    

Allow requests with valid JWT and list-typed claims

  1. The following command creates the jwt-example request authentication policy for the httpbin workload in the foo namespace. This policy accepts a JWT issued by testing@secure.istio.io and copies the value of claim foo to an HTTP header X-Jwt-Claim-Foo:

    $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
    apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
    kind: RequestAuthentication
    metadata:
      name: "jwt-example"
      namespace: foo
    spec:
      selector:
        matchLabels:
          app: httpbin
      jwtRules:
      - issuer: "testing@secure.istio.io"
        jwksUri: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.21/security/tools/jwt/samples/jwks.json"
        outputClaimToHeaders:
        - header: "x-jwt-claim-foo"
          claim: "foo"
    EOF
    
  2. Verify that a request with an invalid JWT is denied:

    $ kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -n foo -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c sleep -n foo -- curl "http://httpbin.foo:8000/headers" -sS -o /dev/null -H "Authorization: Bearer invalidToken" -w "%{http_code}\n"
    401
    
  3. Get the JWT which is issued by testing@secure.istio.io and has a claim with key foo.

    $ TOKEN=$(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.21/security/tools/jwt/samples/demo.jwt -s) && echo "$TOKEN" | cut -d '.' -f2 - | base64 --decode -
    {"exp":4685989700,"foo":"bar","iat":1532389700,"iss":"testing@secure.istio.io","sub":"testing@secure.istio.io"}
    
  4. Verify that a request with a valid JWT is allowed:

    $ kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -n foo -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c sleep -n foo -- curl "http://httpbin.foo:8000/headers" -sS -o /dev/null -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -w "%{http_code}\n"
    200
    
  5. Verify that a request contains a valid HTTP header with JWT claim value:

    $ kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -n foo -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})" -c sleep -n foo -- curl "http://httpbin.foo:8000/headers" -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" | grep "X-Jwt-Claim-Foo" | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//'
    "X-Jwt-Claim-Foo": "bar"
    

Clean up

Remove the namespace foo:

$ kubectl delete namespace foo
Was this information useful?
Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

Thanks for your feedback!