Authorization on Ingress Gateway

If you are using a TCP/UDP Proxy external load balancer (AWS Classic ELB), it can use the Proxy Protocol to embed the original client IP address in the packet data. Both the external load balancer and the Istio ingress gateway must support the proxy protocol for it to work. In Istio, you can enable it with an EnvoyFilter like below:

apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: EnvoyFilter
metadata:
  name: proxy-protocol
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  configPatches:
  - applyTo: LISTENER
    patch:
      operation: MERGE
      value:
        listener_filters:
        - name: envoy.listener.proxy_protocol
        - name: envoy.listener.tls_inspector
  workloadSelector:
    labels:
      istio: ingressgateway

Here is a sample of the IstioOperator that shows how to configure the Istio ingress gateway on AWS EKS to support the Proxy Protocol:

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  meshConfig:
    accessLogEncoding: JSON
    accessLogFile: /dev/stdout
  components:
    ingressGateways:
    - enabled: true
      k8s:
        hpaSpec:
          maxReplicas: 10
          minReplicas: 5
        serviceAnnotations:
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-access-log-emit-interval: "5"
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-access-log-enabled: "true"
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-access-log-s3-bucket-name: elb-logs
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-access-log-s3-bucket-prefix: k8sELBIngressGW
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-proxy-protocol: "*"
        affinity:
          podAntiAffinity:
            preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
            - podAffinityTerm:
                labelSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    istio: ingressgateway
                topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone
              weight: 1
      name: istio-ingressgateway

If you are using a TCP/UDP network load balancer that preserves the client IP address (AWS Network Load Balancer, GCP External Network Load Balancer, Azure Load Balancer) or you are using Round-Robin DNS, then you can also preserve the client IP inside Kubernetes by bypassing kube-proxy and preventing it from sending traffic to other nodes. However, you must run an ingress gateway pod on every node. If you don’t, then any node that receives traffic and doesn’t have an ingress gateway will drop the traffic. See Source IP for Services with Type=NodePort for more information. Update the ingress gateway to set externalTrafficPolicy: Local to preserve the original client source IP on the ingress gateway using the following command:

$ kubectl patch svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system -p '{"spec":{"externalTrafficPolicy":"Local"}}'

If you are using an HTTP/HTTPS external load balancer (AWS ALB, GCP ), it can put the original client IP address in the X-Forwarded-For header. Istio can extract the client IP address from this header with some configuration. See Configuring Gateway Network Topology. Quick example if using a single load balancer in front of Kubernetes:

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  meshConfig:
    accessLogEncoding: JSON
    accessLogFile: /dev/stdout
    defaultConfig:
      gatewayTopology:
        numTrustedProxies: 1

Create the AuthorizationPolicy:

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: ALLOW
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        ipBlocks: ["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.0/24"]
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: ALLOW
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        remoteIpBlocks: ["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.0/24"]
EOF

Find your original client IP address if you don’t know it and assign it to a variable:

$ CLIENT_IP=$(kubectl get pods -n istio-system -o name -l istio=ingressgateway | sed 's|pod/||' | while read -r pod; do kubectl logs "$pod" -n istio-system | grep remoteIP; done | head -1 | awk -F, '{print $3}' | awk -F: '{print $2}' | sed 's/ //') && echo "$CLIENT_IP"
192.168.10.15

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: ALLOW
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        ipBlocks: ["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.0/24", "$CLIENT_IP"]
EOF

Find your original client IP address if you don’t know it and assign it to a variable:

$ CLIENT_IP=$(kubectl get pods -n istio-system -o name -l istio=ingressgateway | sed 's|pod/||' | while read -r pod; do kubectl logs "$pod" -n istio-system | grep remoteIP; done | head -1 | awk -F, '{print $4}' | awk -F: '{print $2}' | sed 's/ //') && echo "$CLIENT_IP"
192.168.10.15

Create the AuthorizationPolicy:

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: ALLOW
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        remoteIpBlocks: ["1.2.3.4", "5.6.7.0/24", "$CLIENT_IP"]
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: DENY
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        ipBlocks: ["$CLIENT_IP"]
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  name: ingress-policy
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: istio-ingressgateway
  action: DENY
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
        remoteIpBlocks: ["$CLIENT_IP"]
EOF