Authorization Policy

Istio Authorization Policy enables access control on workloads in the mesh.

Authorization policy supports CUSTOM, DENY and ALLOW actions for access control. When CUSTOM, DENY and ALLOW actions are used for a workload at the same time, the CUSTOM action is evaluated first, then the DENY action, and finally the ALLOW action. The evaluation is determined by the following rules:

1. If there are any CUSTOM policies that match the request, evaluate and deny the request if the evaluation result is deny.
2. If there are any DENY policies that match the request, deny the request.
3. If there are no ALLOW policies for the workload, allow the request.
4. If any of the ALLOW policies match the request, allow the request.
5. Deny the request.

Istio Authorization Policy also supports the AUDIT action to decide whether to log requests. AUDIT policies do not affect whether requests are allowed or denied to the workload. Requests will be allowed or denied based solely on CUSTOM, DENY and ALLOW actions.

A request will be internally marked that it should be audited if there is an AUDIT policy on the workload that matches the request. A separate plugin must be configured and enabled to actually fulfill the audit decision and complete the audit behavior. The request will not be audited if there are no such supporting plugins enabled. Currently, the only supported plugin is the Stackdriver plugin.

Here is an example of Istio Authorization Policy:

It sets the action to ALLOW to create an allow policy. The default action is ALLOW but it is useful to be explicit in the policy.

It allows requests from:

• service account cluster.local/ns/default/sa/sleep or
• namespace test

to access the workload with:

• GET method at paths of prefix /info or,
• POST method at path /data.

when the request has a valid JWT token issued by https://accounts.google.com.

Any other requests will be denied.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: foo
spec:
  action: ALLOW
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        principals: ["cluster.local/ns/default/sa/sleep"]
    - source:
        namespaces: ["test"]
    to:
    - operation:
        methods: ["GET"]
        paths: ["/info*"]
    - operation:
        methods: ["POST"]
        paths: ["/data"]
    when:
    - key: request.auth.claims[iss]
      values: ["https://accounts.google.com"]

The following is another example that sets action to DENY to create a deny policy. It denies requests from the dev namespace to the POST method on all workloads in the foo namespace.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: foo
spec:
  action: DENY
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        namespaces: ["dev"]
    to:
    - operation:
        methods: ["POST"]

The following is another example that sets action to DENY to create a deny policy. It denies all the requests with POST method on port 8080 on all workloads in the foo namespace.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizaionPolicy
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: foo
spec:
  action: DENY
  rules:
  - to:
    - operation:
        methods: ["POST"]
        ports: ["8080"]

When this rule is applied to TCP traffic, the method field (as will all HTTP based attributes) cannot be processed. For a DENY rule, missing attributes are treated as matches. This means all TCP traffic on port 8080 would be denied in the example above. If we were to remove the ports match, all TCP traffic would be denied. As a result, it is recommended to always scope DENY policies to a specific port, especially when using HTTP attributes Authorization Policy for TCP Ports.

The following authorization policy sets the action to AUDIT. It will audit any GET requests to the path with the prefix /user/profile.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  namespace: ns1
  name: anyname
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: myapi
  action: AUDIT
  rules:
  - to:
    - operation:
        methods: ["GET"]
        paths: ["/user/profile/*"]

Authorization Policy scope (target) is determined by “metadata/namespace” and an optional selector.

• “metadata/namespace” tells which namespace the policy applies. If set to root namespace, the policy applies to all namespaces in a mesh.
• workload selector can be used to further restrict where a policy applies.

For example, the following authorization policy applies to all workloads in namespace foo. It allows nothing and effectively denies all requests to workloads in namespace foo.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
 name: allow-nothing
 namespace: foo
spec:
  {}

The following authorization policy allows all requests to workloads in namespace foo.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
 name: allow-all
 namespace: foo
spec:
 rules:
 - {}

The following authorization policy applies to workloads containing label app: httpbin in namespace bar. It allows nothing and effectively denies all requests to the selected workloads.

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-nothing
  namespace: bar
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: httpbin

The following authorization policy applies to workloads containing label version: v1 in all namespaces in the mesh. (Assuming the root namespace is configured to istio-system).

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
 name: allow-nothing
 namespace: istio-system
spec:
 selector:
   matchLabels:
     version: v1

AuthorizationPolicy

Rule

Source

principals: ["admin", "dev"]
namespaces: ["prod", "test"]
notIpBlocks: ["1.2.3.4"]

Operation

hosts: ["*.example.com"]
methods: ["GET", "HEAD"]
notPaths: ["/admin*"]

Condition

AuthorizationPolicy.ExtensionProvider

Rule.From

Rule.To

AuthorizationPolicy.Action

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ext-authz
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: CUSTOM
  provider:
    name: "my-custom-authz"
  rules:
  - to:
    - operation:
        paths: ["/admin/*"]