Important

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HTTP Basic Auth

You can add HTTP basic authentication to these Confluent Platform components:

Control Center REST API

User login is available using HTTP Basic Authentication that is pluggable using JAAS. All of the configuration options are documented here.

To configure Control Center authentication:

  1. Specify the following options in control-center.properties:

    confluent.controlcenter.rest.authentication.method=BASIC
confluent.controlcenter.rest.authentication.realm=c3
confluent.controlcenter.rest.authentication.roles=Administrators,Restricted
confluent.controlcenter.auth.restricted.roles=Restricted
confluent.controlcenter.auth.session.expiration.ms=600000

    Important

    The properties called confluent.controlcenter.rest.authentication.roles and confluent.controlcenter.auth.restricted.roles both apply to Groups.

    The values for confluent.controlcenter.rest.authentication.roles are <your_administrator_group>,<your_restricted_group>, and the value for confluent.controlcenter.auth.restricted.roles is <your_restricted_group>.

  2. Create a JAAS file (propertyfile.jaas) similar to the following–note that the authentication realm is Control Center (c3):

    c3 {
    org.eclipse.jetty.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule required
    file="/password.properties";
};

    Your password file in password.properties should look similar to the following:

    bob: <bob_password>,<your_administrator_group>
alice: <alice_password>,<your_restricted_group>

  3. Start Control Center to use the JAAS configuration:

    CONTROL_CENTER_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/propertyfile.jaas" control-center-start /control-center.properties

After you are granted access to Control Center, you are prompted for sign-in credentials. Logging in as bob:<bob_password> provides read and write access. Logging in as alice:<alice_password> provides read-only access.

The following main UI elements / options are hidden from restricted users:

  • Add, delete, pause, or resume connectors
  • Browse connectors
  • View connector settings
  • Upload connector configs
  • Create, delete, or edit alerts (triggers or actions)
  • Edit a license
  • Edit brokers
  • Press submit on cluster forms
  • Edit, create, or delete schemas
  • Edit data flow queries
  • Inspect topics
  • Type in the ksqlDB editor
  • Run or stop ksqlDB queries
  • Add KSQL streams or tables

Note

If a user is in both the admin and restricted groups, they are considered a read-only user.

See also

For an example that shows this in action, see the Confluent Platform demo. Refer to the demo’s docker-compose.yml file for a configuration reference.

REST Proxy

  1. Add the following configuration to your REST Proxy properties file (etc/kafka-rest/kafka-rest.properties):

    authentication.method=BASIC
authentication.realm=KafkaServer
authentication.roles=thisismyrole

  2. Create a JAAS configuration file. For an example, see etc/kafka-rest/etc/kafka-rest/rest-jaas.properties:

    KafkaServer {
    org.eclipse.jetty.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule required
    debug="true"
    file="<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka-rest/password.properties";
};

    Tip

    KafkaServer is in line with the realm specified as authentication.realm in kafka-rest.properties.

  3. Create a password properties file (<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka-rest/password.properties). For example:

    thisismyusername: thisismypass,thisismyrole

  4. Start REST Proxy with HTTP Basic auth:

    KAFKAREST_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka-rest/rest-jaas.properties" \
bin/kafka-rest-start etc/kafka-rest/kafka-rest.properties

  5. Configure HTTPS for the REST Proxy interface.

  6. Login to your REST Proxy with the username thisismyusername and the password thisismypass. The password in your password.properties file can also be hashed. For more information, see this link.

Connect REST API

  1. Add the following configuration to your Connect worker properties file (etc/kafka/connect-distributed.propertes):

    rest.extension.classes=org.apache.kafka.connect.rest.basic.auth.extension.BasicAuthSecurityRestExtension

  2. Create a JAAS configuration file. Your authentication realm is hardcoded to KafkaConnect, so your JAAS must look like this:

    KafkaConnect {
    org.apache.kafka.connect.rest.basic.auth.extension.PropertyFileLoginModule required
    file="<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka/connect.password";
};

  3. Export KAFKA_OPTS with the path to the JAAS configuration file:

    export KAFKA_OPTS="-Djava.security.auth.login.config=<path-to-jaas-file>"

  4. Create a password properties file (<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka/connect.password). For example:

    thisismyusername: thisismypass

ksqlDB

  1. Add the following configuration in your ksqlDB properties file (etc/ksqldb/ksql-server.properties):

    authentication.method=BASIC
authentication.roles=admin,developer,user,ksq-user
authentication.realm=KsqlServer-Props

  2. Create a JAAS file (jaas_config.file):

    KsqlServer-Props {
  org.eclipse.jetty.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule required
  file="/path/to/password-file"
  debug="false";
};

  3. Create a password properties file (<path-to-confluent>/etc/ksqldb/password-file):

    fred: OBF:1w8t1tvf1w261w8v1w1c1tvn1w8x,user,admin
harry: changeme,user,developer
tom: MD5:164c88b302622e17050af52c89945d44,user
dick: CRYPT:adpexzg3FUZAk,admin,ksq-user

  4. Export the JAAS file:

    export KSQL_OPTS=-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/path/to/the/jaas_config.file

  5. Start the ksqlDB server:

    <path-to-confluent>/bin/ksql-server-start <path-to-confluent>/etc/ksqldb/ksql-server.properties

For more information, see Configure ksqlDB for Basic HTTP Authentication.

Schema Registry

Schema Registry can be configured to require users to authenticate using a username and password via the Basic HTTP authentication mechanism.

Note

If you’re using Basic authentication, we recommended that you configure Schema Registry to use HTTPS for secure communication, because the Basic protocol passes credentials in plain text.

Use the following settings to configure Schema Registry to require authentication:

authentication.method=BASIC
authentication.roles=<user-role1>,<user-role2>,...
authentication.realm=<section-in-jaas_config.file>

The authentication.roles config defines a comma-separated list of user roles. To be authorized to access Schema Registry, an authenticated user must belong to at least one of these roles.

For example, if you define admin, developer, user, and sr-user roles, the following configuration assigns them for authentication:

authentication.roles=admin,developer,user,sr-user

The authentication.realm config must match a section within jaas_config.file, which defines how the server authenticates users and should be passed as a JVM option during server start:

export SCHEMA_REGISTRY_OPTS=-Djava.security.auth.login.config=/path/to/the/jaas_config.file
<path-to-confluent>/bin/schema-registry-start <path-to-confluent>/etc/schema-registry/schema-registry.properties

An example jaas_config.file is:

SchemaRegistry-Props {
  org.eclipse.jetty.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule required
  file="/path/to/password-file"
  debug="false";
};

Assign the SchemaRegistry-Props section to the authentication.realm config setting:

authentication.realm=SchemaRegistry-Props

The example jaas_config.file above uses the Jetty PropertyFileLoginModule, which authenticates users by checking for their credentials in a password file.

You can also use other implementations of the standard Java LoginModule interface, such as the LdapLoginModule, or the JDBCLoginModule for reading credentials from a database.

The file parameter is the location of the password file, The format is:

<username>: <password-hash>[,<rolename> ...]

Here’s an example:

fred: OBF:1w8t1tvf1w261w8v1w1c1tvn1w8x,user,admin
barney: changeme,user,developer
betty: MD5:164c88b302622e17050af52c89945d44,user
wilma: CRYPT:adpexzg3FUZAk,admin,sr-user

Get the password hash for a user by using the org.eclipse.jetty.util.security.Password utility:

bin/schema-registry-run-class org.eclipse.jetty.util.security.Password fred letmein

Your output should resemble:

letmein
OBF:1w8t1tvf1w261w8v1w1c1tvn1w8x
MD5:0d107d09f5bbe40cade3de5c71e9e9b7
CRYPT:frd5btY/mvXo6

Each line of the output is the password encrypted using different mechanisms, starting with plain text.

Once Schema Registry is configured to use Basic authentication, clients must be configured with suitable valid credentials, for example:

basic.auth.credentials.source=USER_INFO
basic.auth.user.info=fred:letmein

Tip

The schema.registry prefixed versions of these properties were deprecated in Confluent Platform 5.0.

  • schema.registry.basic.auth.credentials.source is deprecated.
  • schema.registry.basic.auth.user.info is deprecated.

For more information, see Schema Registry Security Overview.