Configuring Kibanaedit
SAML authentication in Kibana requires a small number of additional settings in addition to the standard Kibana security configuration. The Kibana security documentation provides details on the available configuration options that you can apply.
In particular, since your Elasticsearch nodes have been configured to use TLS on the HTTP
interface, you must configure Kibana to use a https
URL to connect to Elasticsearch, and
you may need to configure elasticsearch.ssl.certificateAuthorities
to trust
the certificates that Elasticsearch has been configured to use.
SAML authentication in Kibana is also subject to the
xpack.security.sessionTimeout
setting that is described in the Kibana security
documentation, and you may wish to adjust this timeout to meet your local needs.
The three additional settings that are required for SAML support are shown below:
xpack.security.authc.providers: saml.saml1: order: 0 realm: "saml1"
The configuration values used in the example above are:
-
xpack.security.authc.providers
-
Add
saml
provider to instruct Kibana to use SAML SSO as the authentication method. -
xpack.security.authc.providers.saml.<provider-name>.realm
-
Set this to the name of the SAML realm that you have used in your Elasticsearch realm configuration, for instance:
saml1
Supporting SAML and basic authentication in Kibanaedit
The SAML support in Kibana is designed on the expectation that it will be the
primary (or sole) authentication method for users of that Kibana instance.
However, it is possible to support both SAML and Basic authentication within a
single Kibana instance by setting xpack.security.authc.providers
as per the
example below:
xpack.security.authc.providers: saml.saml1: order: 0 realm: "saml1" basic.basic1: order: 1
If Kibana is configured in this way, users are presented with a choice at the Login Selector UI. They log in with SAML or they provide a username and password and rely on one of the other security realms within Elasticsearch. Only users who have a username and password for a configured Elasticsearch authentication realm can log in via Kibana login form.
Alternatively, when the basic
authentication provider is enabled, you can
place a reverse proxy in front of Kibana, and configure it to send a basic
authentication header (Authorization: Basic ....
) for each request.
If this header is present and valid, Kibana will not initiate the SAML
authentication process.
Operating multiple Kibana instancesedit
If you wish to have multiple Kibana instances that authenticate against the same Elasticsearch cluster, then each Kibana instance that is configured for SAML authentication, requires its own SAML realm.
Each SAML realm must have its own unique Entity ID (sp.entity_id
), and its own
Assertion Consumer Service (sp.acs
). Each Kibana instance will be mapped to
the correct realm by looking up the matching sp.acs
value.
These realms may use the same Identity Provider, but are not required to.
The following is example of having 3 difference Kibana instances, 2 of which use the same internal IdP, and another which uses a different IdP.
xpack.security.authc.realms.saml.saml_finance: order: 2 idp.metadata.path: saml/idp-metadata.xml idp.entity_id: "https://sso.example.com/" sp.entity_id: "https://kibana.finance.example.com/" sp.acs: "https://kibana.finance.example.com/api/security/v1/saml" sp.logout: "https://kibana.finance.example.com/logout" attributes.principal: "urn:oid:0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1" attributes.groups: "urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.5923.1.5.1." xpack.security.authc.realms.saml.saml_sales: order: 3 idp.metadata.path: saml/idp-metadata.xml idp.entity_id: "https://sso.example.com/" sp.entity_id: "https://kibana.sales.example.com/" sp.acs: "https://kibana.sales.example.com/api/security/v1/saml" sp.logout: "https://kibana.sales.example.com/logout" attributes.principal: "urn:oid:0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1" attributes.groups: "urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.5923.1.5.1." xpack.security.authc.realms.saml.saml_eng: order: 4 idp.metadata.path: saml/idp-external.xml idp.entity_id: "https://engineering.sso.example.net/" sp.entity_id: "https://kibana.engineering.example.com/" sp.acs: "https://kibana.engineering.example.com/api/security/v1/saml" sp.logout: "https://kibana.engineering.example.com/logout" attributes.principal: "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/upn"
It is possible to have one or more Kibana instances that use SAML, while other instances use basic authentication against another realm type (e.g. Native or LDAP).