Configure Nginx Authentication With JWT

13 Jan 2020, 20:35

Prerequisites

Ensure your machine have the required library and tools. I tested on Ubuntu 18.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libtool-bin build-essential libfuse-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev mime-support automake libtool pkg-config autoconf

Download Jansson C library source code from here then:

$ tar -xvf jansson-2.12.tar.gz
$ cd jansson-2.12/
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..

We need JWT C Library. Make sure autoreconf command is installed:

$ git clone https://github.com/benmcollins/libjwt
$ cd libjwt
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..

Download the source code of Nginx and extract it:

$ tar -xvf nginx-1.16.1.tar.gz
$ cd nginx-1.16.1
$ cd ..

Clone Nginx JWT module:

$ git clone https://github.com/TeslaGov/ngx-http-auth-jwt-module

Configure Nginx to use this module:

$ cd nginx-1.16.1
$ ./configure --add-module=../ngx-http-auth-jwt-module --without-http_gzip_module --with-http_ssl_module
$ sudo cp /usr/local/lib/libjwt.* /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
$ make
$ sudo make install

Use auth_jwt directive in Nginx config. Read documentation on Nginx JWT module. Here is just a sample:

  location / {
            auth_jwt_key "4d6f737461666120417367617269";
            auth_jwt_enabled on;
            auth_jwt_algorithm HS256; # or RS256
            auth_jwt_validate_email off;  # or off
            proxy_pass http://google.com;
        }

Create a JWT token and put it in the authorization header and make a request to Nginx:

curl -H "authorization: Bearer {JWT}" {NGINX_SERVER}

If any problems occurred check Nginx logs.

Prerequisites

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