RBAC Examples

This chapter aims to provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up RBAC and see it in action, with an end-to-end use case. The chosen use case demonstrates how RBAC with workspaces can be coupled to achieve a flexible organization of teams and users in complex hierarchies.

Use Case

For the sake of example, let’s say a given company has a Kong Gateway cluster to be shared with 3 teams: teamA, teamB, and teamC. While the Kong cluster are shared among these teams, they want to be able to segment their entities in such a way that management of entities in one team doesn’t disrupt operation in some other team. As shown in the Workspaces Page, such a use case is possible with workspaces. On top of workspaces, though, each team wants to enforce access control over their Workspace, which is possible with RBAC. To sum up, Workspaces and RBAC are complementary: Workspaces provide segmentation of Admin API entities, while RBAC provides access control.

Bootstrapping the first RBAC user—the Super Admin

Note: It is possible to create the first Super Admin at the time of migration as described in the Getting Started Guide. If you chose this option, skip to Enforcing RBAC.

Before anything, we will assume the Kong Admin—or, more interestingly, the KongOps Engineer—in charge of operating Kong, will create a Super Admin user, before actually enforcing RBAC and restarting Kong with RBAC enabled.

As Kong ships with a handy set of default RBAC Roles—the super-admin, the admin, and read-only—the task of creating a Super Admin user is quite easy:

Create the RBAC user, named super-admin:

  1. http :8001/rbac/users name=super-admin
  2. {
  3.   "user_token": "M8J5A88xKXa7FNKsMbgLMjkm6zI2anOY",
  4.   "id": "da80838d-49f8-40f6-b673-6fff3e2c305b",
  5.   "enabled": true,
  6.   "created_at": 1531009435000,
  7.   "name": "super-admin"
  8. }

As the super-admin user name coincides with an existing super-admin role, it gets automatically added to the super-admin role—which can be confirmed with the following command:

  1. http :8001/rbac/users/super-admin/roles
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Full access to all endpoints, across all workspaces",
  6.       "created_at": 1531009724000,
  7.       "name": "super-admin",
  8.       "id": "b924ac91-e83f-4136-a5a4-4a7ff92594a8"
  9.     }
  10.   ],
  11.   "user": {
  12.     "created_at": 1531009858000,
  13.     "id": "e6897cc0-0c34-4a9c-9f0b-cc65b4f04d68",
  14.     "name": "super-admin",
  15.     "enabled": true,
  16.     "user_token": "vajeOlkybsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8"
  17.   }
  18. }

Enforcing RBAC

As the super-admin user has just been created, the Kong Admin may now restart Kong with RBAC enforced, with, e.g.:

  1. KONG_ENFORCE_RBAC=on kong restart

NOTE: This is one of the possible ways of enforcing RBAC and restarting Kong; another possibility is editing the Kong configuration file and restarting.

Before we move on, note that we will be using the Super Admin user, but we could, in fact, be moving without RBAC enabled, and having our Kong Admin do all the job of setting up the RBAC hierarchy. We want, however, to stress the fact that RBAC is powerful enough to allow a flexible separation of tasks. To summarize:

  • Kong Admin: this user has physical access to Kong infrastructure; her task is to bootstrap the Kong cluster as well as its configuration, including initial RBAC users;
  • RBAC Super Admin: created by the Kong Admin, has the role of managing RBAC users, roles, etc; this could all be done by the Kong Admin, but let’s give him a break.

Super Admin creates the teams Workspaces

The Super Admin will now set up our 3 teams: teamA, teamB, and teamC, creating one workspace for each, one admin for each. Enough talking.

Creating workspaces for each team—this overlaps a bit with Workspaces Examples, yes, but it will make our exploration of RBAC + Workspaces easier:

Team A:

  1. http :8001/workspaces name=teamA Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "name": "teamA",
  4.   "created_at": 1531014100000,
  5.   "id": "1412f3a6-4d9b-4b9d-964e-60d8d63a9d46"
  6. }

Team B:

  1. http :8001/workspaces name=teamB Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "name": "teamB",
  4.   "created_at": 1531014143000,
  5.   "id": "7dee8c56-c6db-4125-b87a-b508baa33c66"
  6. }

Team C:

  1. http :8001/workspaces name=teamC Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "name": "teamC",
  4.   "created_at": 1531014171000,
  5.   "id": "542c8662-17cc-49eb-af50-6eb14f3b2e8a"
  6. }

NOTE: this is the RBAC Super Admin creating workspaces—note his token being passed in through the Kong-Admin-Token HTTP header.

Super Admin Creates one Admin for each Team

Team A:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users name=adminA Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "user_token": "qv1VLIpl8kHj7lC1QOKwRdCMXanqEDii",
  4.   "id": "4d315ff9-8c1a-4844-9ea2-21b16204a154",
  5.   "enabled": true,
  6.   "created_at": 1531015165000,
  7.   "name": "adminA"
  8. }

Team B:

  1. http :8001/teamB/rbac/users name=adminB Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "user_token": "IX5vHVgYqM40tLcctdmzRtHyfxB4ToYv",
  4.   "id": "49641fc0-8c9d-4507-bc7a-2acac8f2903a",
  5.   "enabled": true,
  6.   "created_at": 1531015221000,
  7.   "name": "adminB"
  8. }

Team C:

  1. http :8001/teamC/rbac/users name=adminC Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "user_token": "w2f7tsuUW4BerXocZIMRQHE84nK2ZAo7",
  4.   "id": "74643f69-8852-49f9-b363-21971bac4f52",
  5.   "enabled": true,
  6.   "created_at": 1531015304000,
  7.   "name": "teamC"
  8. }

With this, all of the teams have one admin and each admin can only be seen in his corresponding workspace. To verify:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531014784000,
  7.       "id": "1faaacd1-709f-4762-8c3e-79f268ec8faf",
  8.       "name": "adminA",
  9.       "enabled": true,
  10.       "user_token": "n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG"
  11.     }
  12.   ]
  13. }

Similarly, workspaces teamB and teamC only show their respective admins:

  1. http :8001/teamB/rbac/users Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531014805000,
  7.       "id": "3a829408-c1ee-4764-8222-2d280a5de441",
  8.       "name": "adminB",
  9.       "enabled": true,
  10.       "user_token": "C8b6kTTN10JFyU63ORjmCQwVbvK4maeq"
  11.     }
  12.   ]
  13. }
  1. http :8001/teamC/rbac/users Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531014813000,
  7.       "id": "84d43cdb-5274-4b74-ad22-615e50f005e3",
  8.       "name": "adminC",
  9.       "enabled": true,
  10.       "user_token": "zN5Nj8U1MiGR7vVQKvl8odaGBDI6mjgY"
  11.     }
  12.   ]
  13. }

Super Admin Creates Admin Roles for Teams

Super Admin is now done creating RBAC Admin users for each team; his next task is to create admin roles that will effectively grant permissions to admin users.

The admin role must have access to all of the Admin API, restricted to his workspace.

Setting up the Admin role—pay close attention to the request parameters:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/ name=admin Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531016728000,
  4.   "id": "d40e61ab-8dad-4ef2-a48b-d11379f7b8d1",
  5.   "name": "admin"
  6. }

Creating role endpoint permissions:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/admin/endpoints/ endpoint=* workspace=teamA actions=* Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "endpoint": "*",
  7.       "created_at": 1531017322000,
  8.       "role_id": "d40e61ab-8dad-4ef2-a48b-d11379f7b8d1",
  9.       "actions": [
  10.         "delete",
  11.         "create",
  12.         "update",
  13.         "read"
  14.       ],
  15.       "negative": false,
  16.       "workspace": "teamA"
  17.     }
  18.   ]
  19. }

Next logical step is to add the adminA user—admin of Team A—to the Admin role in his workspace:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/adminA/roles/ roles=admin Kong-Admin-Token:vajeOlkbsn0q0VD9qw9B3nHYOErgY7b8
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Default user role generated for adminA",
  6.       "created_at": 1531014784000,
  7.       "id": "e2941b41-92a4-4f49-be89-f1a452bdecd0",
  8.       "name": "adminA"
  9.     },
  10.     {
  11.       "created_at": 1531016728000,
  12.       "id": "d40e61ab-8dad-4ef2-a48b-d11379f7b8d1",
  13.       "name": "admin"
  14.     }
  15.   ],
  16.   "user": {
  17.     "created_at": 1531014784000,
  18.     "id": "1faaacd1-709f-4762-8c3e-79f268ec8faf",
  19.     "name": "adminA",
  20.     "enabled": true,
  21.     "user_token": "n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG"
  22.   }
  23. }

Note the admin role in the list above.

With these steps, Team A’s admin user is now able to manage his team. To validate that, let’s try to list RBAC users in Team B using Team A’s admin user token—and see that we are not allowed to do so:

  1. http :8001/teamB/rbac/users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "message": "Invalid RBAC credentials"
  4. }

Said admin is, however, allowed to list RBAC users in Team A’s workspace:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531014784000,
  7.       "id": "1faaacd1-709f-4762-8c3e-79f268ec8faf",
  8.       "name": "adminA",
  9.       "enabled": true,
  10.       "user_token": "n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG"
  11.     }
  12.   ]
  13. }

If the same procedure is repeated for Team B and Team C, they will end up with a similar set up, with an admin role and an admin user, both restricted to the team’s workspace.

And so Super Admin ends his participation; individual team admins are now able to set up his teams users and entities!

Team Admins Create Team Regular Users

From this point on, team admins are able to drive the process; the next logical step is for Team users to be created; such team users could be, for example, engineers that are part of Team A (or B or C). Let’s go ahead and do that, using Admin A’s user token.

Before regular users can be created, a role needs to be available for them. Such a role needs to have permissions to all of Admin API endpoints, except RBAC and Workspaces—regular users will not need access to these in general and, if they do, the Admin can grant them.

Creating the regular users role:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/ name=users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531020346000,
  4.   "id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  5.   "name": "users"
  6. }

Creating permissions in the regular users role:

First, permission to all of Admin API—positive permission on *:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/users/endpoints/ endpoint=* workspace=teamA actions=* Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "endpoint": "*",
  4.   "created_at": 1531020573000,
  5.   "role_id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  6.   "actions": [
  7.     "delete",
  8.     "create",
  9.     "update",
  10.     "read"
  11.   ],
  12.   "negative": false,
  13.   "workspace": "teamA"
  14. }

Then, filter out RBAC and workspaces with negative permissions:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/users/endpoints/ endpoint=/rbac/* workspace=teamA actions=* Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "endpoint": "/rbac/*",
  4.   "created_at": 1531020744000,
  5.   "role_id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  6.   "actions": [
  7.     "delete",
  8.     "create",
  9.     "update",
  10.     "read"
  11.   ],
  12.   "negative": true,
  13.   "workspace": "teamA"
  14. }
  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/users/endpoints/ endpoint=/workspaces/* workspace=teamA actions=* Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "endpoint": "/workspaces/*",
  4.   "created_at": 1531020778000,
  5.   "role_id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  6.   "actions": [
  7.     "delete",
  8.     "create",
  9.     "update",
  10.     "read"
  11.   ],
  12.   "negative": true,
  13.   "workspace": "teamA"
  14. }

IMPORTANT: as explained in the Wildcards in Permissions section, the meaning of * is not the expected generic globbing one might be used to. As such, /rbac/* or /workspaces/* do not match all of the RBAC and Workspaces endpoints. For example, to cover all of the RBAC API, one would have to define permissions for the following endpoints:

  • /rbac/*
  • /rbac/*/*
  • /rbac/*/*/*
  • /rbac/*/*/*/*
  • /rbac/*/*/*/*/*

Team A just got 3 new members: foogineer, bargineer, and bazgineer. Admin A will welcome them to the team by creating RBAC users for them and giving them access to Kong!

Create foogineer:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users name=foogineer Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531019797000,
  4.   "id": "0b4111da-2827-4767-8651-a327f7a559e9",
  5.   "name": "foogineer",
  6.   "enabled": true,
  7.   "user_token": "dNeYvYAwvjOJdoReVJZXF8vLBXQioKkI"
  8. }

Add foogineer to the users role:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/foogineer/roles roles=users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Default user role generated for foogineer",
  6.       "created_at": 1531019797000,
  7.       "id": "125c4212-b882-432d-a323-9cbe38b1d0df",
  8.       "name": "foogineer"
  9.     },
  10.     {
  11.       "created_at": 1531020346000,
  12.       "id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  13.       "name": "users"
  14.     }
  15.   ],
  16.   "user": {
  17.     "created_at": 1531019797000,
  18.     "id": "0b4111da-2827-4767-8651-a327f7a559e9",
  19.     "name": "foogineer",
  20.     "enabled": true,
  21.     "user_token": "dNeYvYAwvjOJdoReVJZXF8vLBXQioKkI"
  22.   }
  23. }

Create bargineer:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users name=bargineer Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531019837000,
  4.   "id": "25dfa68e-32e8-48d8-815f-6fedfd2fb4a6",
  5.   "name": "bargineer",
  6.   "enabled": true,
  7.   "user_token": "eZj3WUc46wO3zEJbLP3Y4VGvNaUgGlyv"
  8. }

Add bargineer to the users role:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/bargineer/roles roles=users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Default user role generated for bargineer",
  6.       "created_at": 1531019837000,
  7.       "id": "3edb00c2-9ae1-423d-ac81-bec702c29e37",
  8.       "name": "bargineer"
  9.     },
  10.     {
  11.       "created_at": 1531020346000,
  12.       "id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b",
  13.       "name": "users"
  14.     }
  15.   ],
  16.   "user": {
  17.     "created_at": 1531019837000,
  18.     "id": "25dfa68e-32e8-48d8-815f-6fedfd2fb4a6",
  19.     "name": "bargineer",
  20.     "enabled": true,
  21.     "user_token": "eZj3WUc46wO3zEJbLP3Y4VGvNaUgGlyv"
  22.   }
  23. }

Create bazgineer:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users name=bazgineer Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531019937000,
  4.   "id": "ea7207d7-0d69-427b-b288-ce696b7f4690",
  5.   "name": "bazgineer",
  6.   "enabled": true,
  7.   "user_token": "r8NhaT213Zm8o1woQF4ZyQyCVjFRgGp3"
  8. }

Add bazgineer to the users role:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/bazgineer/roles roles=users Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Default user role generated for bazgineer",
  6.       "created_at": 1531019937000,
  7.       "id": "fa409bb6-c86c-45d2-8a6b-ac8e71de2cc9",
  8.       "name": "bazgineer"
  9.     },
  10.     {
  11.       "created_at": 1531020346000,
  12.       "name": "users",
  13.       "id": "9846b92c-6820-4741-ac31-425b3d6abc5b"
  14.     }
  15.   ],
  16.   "user": {
  17.     "created_at": 1531019937000,
  18.     "id": "ea7207d7-0d69-427b-b288-ce696b7f4690",
  19.     "name": "bazgineer",
  20.     "enabled": true,
  21.     "user_token": "r8NhaT213Zm8o1woQF4ZyQyCVjFRgGp3"
  22.   }
  23. }

Regular Team Users use their tokens

foogineer, bargineer, and bazgineer all have gotten their RBAC user tokens from their Team A admin, and are now allowed to explore Kong—within the confines of their Team A workspace. Let’s validate they can in fact do anything they wish, except over RBAC and Workspaces.

Try listing Workspaces:

  1. http :8001/teamA/workspaces/ Kong-Admin-Token:dNeYvYAwvjOJdoReVJZXF8vLBXQioKkI
  2. {
  3.   "message": "foogineer, you do not have permissions to read this resource"
  4. }

Enable some plugin—e.g., key-auth:

  1. http :8001/teamA/plugins name=key-auth Kong-Admin-Token:dNeYvYAwvjOJdoReVJZXF8vLBXQioKkI
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531021732000,
  4.   "config": {
  5.     "key_in_body": false,
  6.     "run_on_preflight": true,
  7.     "anonymous": "",
  8.     "hide_credentials": false,
  9.     "key_names": [
  10.       "apikey"
  11.     ]
  12.   },
  13.   "id": "cdc85ef0-804b-4f92-aafd-3ff58512e445",
  14.   "enabled": true,
  15.   "name": "key-auth"
  16. }

List currently enabled plugins:

  1. http :8001/teamA/plugins Kong-Admin-Token:dNeYvYAwvjOJdoReVJZXF8vLBXQioKkI
  2. {
  3.   "total": 1,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531021732000,
  7.       "config": {
  8.         "key_in_body": false,
  9.         "run_on_preflight": true,
  10.         "anonymous": "",
  11.         "hide_credentials": false,
  12.         "key_names": [
  13.           "apikey"
  14.         ]
  15.       },
  16.       "id": "cdc85ef0-804b-4f92-aafd-3ff58512e445",
  17.       "name": "key-auth",
  18.       "enabled": true
  19.     }
  20.   ]
  21. }

This ends our use case tutorial; it demonstrates the power of RBAC and workspaces with a real-world scenario. Following, we will approach Entity-Level RBAC, an extension of our powerful access control to entity-level granularity.

Entity-Level RBAC: a Primer

Kong Gateway’s new RBAC implementation goes one step further in permissions granularity: in addition to “endpoint” permissions, it supports entity-level permissions, meaning that particular entities, identified by their unique ID, can be allowed or disallowed access in a role.

Refreshing our minds, RBAC is enforced with the enforce_rbac configuration directive—or with its KONG_ENFORCE_RBAC environment variable counterpart. Such directive is an enum, with 4 possible values:

  • on: similarly to the previous RBAC implementation, applies Endpoint-level access control
  • entity: applies only Entity-level access control
  • both: applies both Endpoint and Entity level access control
  • off: disables RBAC enforcement

If one sets it to either entity or both, Kong will enforce entity-level access control. However, as with endpoint-level access control, permissions must be bootstrapped before enforcement is enabled.

Creating Entity-Level Permissions

Team A just got one new, temporary, team member: qux. Admin A, the admin of Team A, has already created his qux RBAC user; he needs, however, to limit access that qux has over entities in Team A workspace, giving him read access to only a couple of entities—say, a Service and a Route. For that, he will use Entity-Level RBAC.

Admin A creates a role for the temporary user qux:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles name=qux-role Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "name": "qux-role",
  4.   "created_at": 1531065975000,
  5.   "id": "ffe93269-7993-4308-965e-0286d0bc87b9"
  6. }

We will assume the following entities exist:

A service:

  1. http :8001/teamA/services Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "next": null,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "host": "httpbin.org",
  7.       "created_at": 1531066074,
  8.       "connect_timeout": 60000,
  9.       "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43",
  10.       "protocol": "http",
  11.       "name": "service1",
  12.       "read_timeout": 60000,
  13.       "port": 80,
  14.       "path": null,
  15.       "updated_at": 1531066074,
  16.       "retries": 5,
  17.       "write_timeout": 60000
  18.     }
  19.   ]
  20. }

and a Route to that Service:

  1. http :8001/teamA/routes Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "next": null,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531066253,
  7.       "id": "d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b",
  8.       "hosts": null,
  9.       "updated_at": 1531066253,
  10.       "preserve_host": false,
  11.       "regex_priority": 0,
  12.       "service": {
  13.         "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43"
  14.       },
  15.       "paths": [
  16.         "/anything"
  17.       ],
  18.       "methods": null,
  19.       "strip_path": false,
  20.       "protocols": [
  21.         "http",
  22.         "https"
  23.       ]
  24.     }
  25.   ]
  26. }

Admin A creates entity permissions in qux-role:

Add service1—whose ID is 3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/qux-role/entities entity_id=3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43 actions=read Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531066684000,
  4.   "role_id": "ffe93269-7993-4308-965e-0286d0bc87b9",
  5.   "entity_id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43",
  6.   "negative": false,
  7.   "entity_type": "services",
  8.   "actions": [
  9.     "read"
  10.   ]
  11. }

Add the route—whose ID is d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/roles/qux-role/entities entity_id=d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b actions=read Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531066728000,
  4.   "role_id": "ffe93269-7993-4308-965e-0286d0bc87b9",
  5.   "entity_id": "d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b",
  6.   "negative": false,
  7.   "entity_type": "routes",
  8.   "actions": [
  9.     "read"
  10.   ]
  11. }

Admin A adds qux to his role:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/qux/roles roles=qux-role Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "roles": [
  4.     {
  5.       "comment": "Default user role generated for qux",
  6.       "created_at": 1531065373000,
  7.       "name": "qux",
  8.       "id": "31614171-4174-42b4-9fae-43c9ce14830f"
  9.     },
  10.     {
  11.       "created_at": 1531065975000,
  12.       "name": "qux-role",
  13.       "id": "ffe93269-7993-4308-965e-0286d0bc87b9"
  14.     }
  15.   ],
  16.   "user": {
  17.     "created_at": 1531065373000,
  18.     "id": "4d87bf78-5824-4756-b0d0-ceaa9bd9b2d5",
  19.     "name": "qux",
  20.     "enabled": true,
  21.     "user_token": "sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5"
  22.   }
  23. }

Checking permissions appear listed:

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/qux/permissions Kong-Admin-Token:n5bhjgv0speXp4N7rSUzUj8PGnl3F5eG
  2. {
  3.   "entities": {
  4.     "d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b": {
  5.       "actions": [
  6.         "read"
  7.       ],
  8.       "negative": false
  9.     },
  10.     "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43": {
  11.       "actions": [
  12.         "read"
  13.       ],
  14.       "negative": false
  15.     }
  16.   },
  17.   "endpoints": {}
  18. }

That is, 2 entities permissions and no endpoint permissions.

Admin A is done setting up qux, and qux can now use his user token to read his two entities over Kong’s admin API.

We will assume that Admin A enabled entity-level enforcement. Note that as qux has no endpoint-level permissions, if both endpoint and entity-level enforcement is enabled, he will not be able to read his entities - endpoint-level validation comes before entity-level.

qux tries listing all RBAC users

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/users/ Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "message": "qux, you do not have permissions to read this resource"
  4. }

qux tries listing all Workspaces

  1. http :8001/teamA/rbac/workspaces/ Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "message": "qux, you do not have permissions to read this resource"
  4. }

qux tries to access service1

  1. http :8001/teamA/services/service1 Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "host": "httpbin.org",
  4.   "created_at": 1531066074,
  5.   "connect_timeout": 60000,
  6.   "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43",
  7.   "protocol": "http",
  8.   "name": "service1",
  9.   "read_timeout": 60000,
  10.   "port": 80,
  11.   "path": null,
  12.   "updated_at": 1531066074,
  13.   "retries": 5,
  14.   "write_timeout": 60000
  15. }

Similarly, he can access his Route:

  1. http :8001/teamA/routes/3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43 Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531066253,
  4.   "strip_path": false,
  5.   "hosts": null,
  6.   "preserve_host": false,
  7.   "regex_priority": 0,
  8.   "updated_at": 1531066253,
  9.   "paths": [
  10.     "/anything"
  11.   ],
  12.   "service": {
  13.     "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43"
  14.   },
  15.   "methods": null,
  16.   "protocols": [
  17.     "http",
  18.     "https"
  19.   ],
  20.   "id": "d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b"
  21. }

Closing Remarks

We will end this chapter with a few closing remarks.

Wildcards in Permissions

RBAC supports the use of wildcards—represented by the * character—in many aspects of permissions:

Creating endpoint permissions—/rbac/roles/:role/endpoints

To create an endpoint permission, one must pass the parameters below, all of which can be replaced by a * character:

  • endpoint: * matches any endpoint
  • workspace: * matches any workspace
  • actions: * evaluates to all actions—read, update, create, delete

Special case: endpoint, in addition to a single *, also accepts * within the endpoint itself, replacing a URL segment between /; for example, all of the following are valid endpoints:

  • /rbac/*: where * replaces any possible segment—e.g., /rbac/users, /rbac/roles, etc
  • /services/*/plugins: * matches any Service name or ID

Note, however, that * is not a generic, shell-like, glob pattern.

If workspace is omitted, it defaults to the current request’s workspace. For example, a role-endpoint permission created with /teamA/roles/admin/endpoints is scoped to workspace teamA.

Creating entity permissions—/rbac/roles/:role/entities

Similarly, for entity permissions, the following parameters accept a * character:

  • entity_id: * matches any entity ID

Entities Concealing in Entity-Level RBAC

With Entity-Level RBAC enabled, endpoints that list all entities of a particular collection will only list entities that the user has access to; in the example above, if user qux listed all Routes, he would only get as response the entities he has access to—even though there could be more:

  1. http :8001/teamA/routes Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "next": null,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531066253,
  7.       "id": "d25afc46-dc59-48b2-b04f-d3ebe19f6d4b",
  8.       "hosts": null,
  9.       "updated_at": 1531066253,
  10.       "preserve_host": false,
  11.       "regex_priority": 0,
  12.       "service": {
  13.         "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43"
  14.       },
  15.       "paths": [
  16.         "/anything"
  17.       ],
  18.       "methods": null,
  19.       "strip_path": false,
  20.       "protocols": [
  21.         "http",
  22.         "https"
  23.       ]
  24.     }
  25.   ]
  26. }

Some Kong endpoints carry a total field in responses; with Entity-Level RBAC enabled, the global count of entities is displayed, but only entities the user has access to are themselves shown; for example, if Team A has a number of plugins configured, but qux only has access to one of them, the following would be the expected output for a GET request to /teamA/plugins:

  1. http :8001/teamA/plugins Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "total": 2,
  4.   "data": [
  5.     {
  6.       "created_at": 1531070344000,
  7.       "config": {
  8.         "key_in_body": false,
  9.         "run_on_preflight": true,
  10.         "anonymous": "",
  11.         "hide_credentials": false,
  12.         "key_names": [
  13.           "apikey"
  14.         ]
  15.       },
  16.       "id": "8813dd0b-3e9d-4bcf-8a10-3112654f86e7",
  17.       "name": "key-auth",
  18.       "enabled": true
  19.     }
  20.   ]
  21. }

Notice the total field is 2, but qux only got one entity in the response.

Creating Entities in Entity-Level RBAC

As entity-level RBAC provides access control to individual existing entities, it does not apply to creation of new entities; for that, endpoint-level permissions must be configured and enforced. For example, if endpoint-level permissions are not enforced, qux will be able to create new entities:

  1. http :8001/teamA/routes paths[]=/anything service.id=3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43 strip_path=false Kong-Admin-Token:sUnv6uBehM91amYRNWESsgX3HzqoBnR5
  2. {
  3.   "created_at": 1531070828,
  4.   "strip_path": false,
  5.   "hosts": null,
  6.   "preserve_host": false,
  7.   "regex_priority": 0,
  8.   "updated_at": 1531070828,
  9.   "paths": [
  10.     "/anything"
  11.   ],
  12.   "service": {
  13.     "id": "3ed24101-19a7-4a0b-a10f-2f47bcd4ff43"
  14.   },
  15.   "methods": null,
  16.   "protocols": [
  17.     "http",
  18.     "https"
  19.   ],
  20.   "id": "6ee76f74-3c96-46a9-ae48-72df0717d244"
  21. }

and qux will automatically have permissions to perform any actions to entities he created.