MinIO External Access Management Plugin

Overview

The MinIO Access Management Plugin provides a REST interface for offloading authorization through a webhook service.

Once enabled, MinIO sends the request and credential details for every API call to the configured external HTTP(S) endpoint and looks for a response of ALLOW or DENY. MinIO can therefore delegate the access management to the external system instead of relying on S3 policy based access control.

Configuration Settings

You can configure the MinIO External Access Management Plugin using the following environment variables or configuration settings.

Environment Variables

Specify the following environmental variables to each MinIO server in the deployment:

MINIO_POLICY_PLUGIN_URL="https://external-authz.example.net:8080/authz"

# All other envvars are optional
MINIO_POLICY_PLUGIN_AUTH_TOKEN="Bearer TOKEN"
MINIO_POLICY_PLUGIN_ENABLE_HTTP2="OFF"
MINIO_POLICY_PLUGIN_COMMENT="External Access Management using PROVIDER"

Configuration Settings

Set the following configuration settings using the mc admin config set command:

mc admin config set policy_plugin \
   url="https://external-authz.example.net:8080/authz" \

   # All other config settings are optional
   auth_token="Bearer TOKEN" \
   enable_http2="off" \
   comment="External Access Management using PROVIDER"

Authentication and Authorization Flow

The login flow for an application is as follows:

The client includes authentication information as part of performing the API call
The configured Identity Manager authenticates the client
MinIO makes a POST call to the configured access management plugin URL which includes the context of the API call and authentication data
On successful authorization, the access manager returns a 200 OK response with a JSON body of either result true or "result" : { "allow" : true }:

If the access manager rejects the authorization request, MinIO automatically blocks and denies the API call.

Request Body Example

The following JSON resembles the request body sent as part of the POST to the configured access manager webhook.

{
   "input": {
      "account": "minio",
      "groups": null,
      "action": "s3:ListBucket",
      "bucket": "test",
      "conditions": {
         "Authorization": [
         "AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=minio/20220507/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request, SignedHeaders=host;x-amz-content-sha256;x-amz-date, Signature=62012db6c47d697620cf6c68f0f45f6e34894589a53ab1faf6dc94338468c78a"
         ],
         "CurrentTime": [ "2022-05-07T18:31:41Z" ],
         "Delimiter": [ "/" ],
         "EpochTime": [
         "1651948301"
         ],
         "Prefix": [ "" ],
         "Referer": [ "" ],
         "SecureTransport": [ "false" ],
         "SourceIp": [ "127.0.0.1" ],
         "User-Agent": [ "MinIO (linux; amd64) minio-go/v7.0.24 mc/DEVELOPMENT.2022-04-20T23-07-53Z" ],
         "UserAgent": [ "MinIO (linux; amd64) minio-go/v7.0.24 mc/DEVELOPMENT.2022-04-20T23-07-53Z" ],
         "X-Amz-Content-Sha256": [ "e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855" ],
         "X-Amz-Date": [ "20220507T183141Z" ],
         "authType": [ "REST-HEADER" ],
         "principaltype": [ "Account" ],
         "signatureversion": [ "AWS4-HMAC-SHA256" ],
         "userid": [ "minio" ],
         "username": [ "minio" ],
         "versionid": [ "" ]
      },
      "owner": true,
      "object": "",
      "claims": {},
      "denyOnly": false
   }
}

Response Body Example

MinIO requires the response body from the Access Management service meet one of the two following formats:

{ "result" : true }

{ "result" : { "allow" : true } }