Role Based Access Control

Role Based Access Control

The Role Based Access Control (RBAC) filter checks if the incoming request is authorized or not. Unlike external authorization, the check of RBAC filter happens in the Envoy process and is based on a list of policies from the filter config.

The RBAC filter can be either configured as a network filter, or as a HTTP filter or both. If the request is deemed unauthorized by the network filter then the connection will be closed. If the request is deemed unauthorized by the HTTP filter the request will be denied with 403 (Forbidden) response.

Policy

The RBAC filter checks the request based on a list of policies. A policy consists of a list of permissions and principals. The permission specifies the actions of the request, for example, the method and path of a HTTP request. The principal specifies the downstream client identities of the request, for example, the URI SAN of the downstream client certificate. A policy is matched if its permissions and principals are matched at the same time.

Shadow Policy

The filter can be configured with a shadow policy that doesn’t have any effect (i.e. not deny the request) but only emit stats and log the result. This is useful for testing a rule before applying in production.

Condition

In addition to the pre-defined permissions and principals, a policy may optionally provide an authorization condition written in the Common Expression Language. The condition specifies an extra clause that must be satisfied for the policy to match. For example, the following condition checks whether the request path starts with /v1/:

call_expr:
  function: startsWith
  args:
  - select_expr:
     operand:
       ident_expr:
         name: request
     field: path
  - const_expr:
     string_value: /v1/

The following attributes are exposed to the language runtime:

Attribute	Type	Description
request.path	string	The path portion of the URL
request.url_path	string	The path portion of the URL without the query string
request.host	string	The host portion of the URL
request.scheme	string	The scheme portion of the URL
request.method	string	Request method
request.headers	string map	All request headers
request.referer	string	Referer request header
request.useragent	string	User agent request header
request.time	timestamp	Time of the first byte received
request.duration	duration	Total duration of the request
request.id	string	Request ID
request.size	int	Size of the request body
request.total_size	int	Total size of the request including the headers
request.protocol	string	Request protocol e.g. “HTTP/2”
response.code	int	Response HTTP status code
response.grpc_status	int	Response gRPC status code
response.headers	string map	All response headers
response.trailers	string map	All response trailers
response.size	int	Size of the response body
response.total_size	int	Total size of the response including the approximate uncompressed size of the headers and the trailers
response.flags	int	Additional details about the response beyond the standard response code
source.address	string	Downstream connection remote address
source.port	int	Downstream connection remote port
destination.address	string	Downstream connection local address
destination.port	int	Downstream connection local port
metadata	Metadata	Dynamic metadata
connection.mtls	bool	Indicates whether TLS is applied to the downstream connection and the peer ceritificate is presented
connection.requested_server_name	string	Requested server name in the downstream TLS connection
connection.tls_version	string	TLS version of the downstream TLS connection
connection.subject_local_certificate	string	The subject field of the local certificate in the downstream TLS connection
connection.subject_peer_certificate	string	The subject field of the peer certificate in the downstream TLS connection
connection.dns_san_local_certificate	string	The first DNS entry in the SAN field of the local certificate in the downstream TLS connection
connection.dns_san_peer_certificate	string	The first DNS entry in the SAN field of the peer certificate in the downstream TLS connection
connection.uri_san_local_certificate	string	The first URI entry in the SAN field of the local certificate in the downstream TLS connection
connection.uri_san_peer_certificate	string	The first URI entry in the SAN field of the peer certificate in the downstream TLS connection
upstream.address	string	Upstream connection remote address
upstream.port	int	Upstream connection remote port
upstream.tls_version	string	TLS version of the upstream TLS connection
upstream.subject_local_certificate	string	The subject field of the local certificate in the upstream TLS connection
upstream.subject_peer_certificate	string	The subject field of the peer certificate in the upstream TLS connection
upstream.dns_san_local_certificate	string	The first DNS entry in the SAN field of the local certificate in the upstream TLS connection
upstream.dns_san_peer_certificate	string	The first DNS entry in the SAN field of the peer certificate in the upstream TLS connection
upstream.uri_san_local_certificate	string	The first URI entry in the SAN field of the local certificate in the upstream TLS connection
upstream.uri_san_peer_certificate	string	The first URI entry in the SAN field of the peer certificate in the upstream TLS connection

Most attributes are optional and provide the default value based on the type of the attribute. CEL supports presence checks for attributes and maps using has() syntax, e.g. has(request.referer).