SSO using OpenID Connect

[Timshel]

This is based on previous PR (#2787, #2449 and #3154) with work done by @pinpox, @m4w0lf, @Sheap, @bmunro-peralex, @tribut and others I probably missed sorry.

This PR add support for OpenId Connect to handle authentication to an external SSO.
This introduce another way to control who can use the vault without having to use invitation or an LDAP.

A master password is still required and not controlled by the SSO (depending of your point of view this might be a feature ;). A key connector to remove this could be added but is not planned in this PR.

Usage

This should be agnostic to the SSO used as long as it support client secret authentication and expose an OpenID Connect Discovery endpoint. (I'm testing it with Keycloak at the moment, a demo test stack is avaible README.md)

Added some documentation at the root of the project SSO.md that could be later moved to the wiki.

I made some additionnal modification in my main branch to allow for easier testing (modified Docker image to use prebuilt patched front-end).

On front-end modification, I made patched versions available at Timshel/oidc_web_builds. Two versions are available :

• One only restore the SSO login button
• Other one additionally :
  • set #sso as the default redirect url and remove some unnecessary logic
  • allow organization invitation to survive sso redirection

Only the first one is expected to be merged since only change compatible with the non-sso version will be accepted.

Issues

As mentioned in the previous PR one of the main issue is the inability for the organization invitation to work with the SSO redirection. To fix it a patch to the front-end is needed.

Related PR

In an effort to try to simplify the review of this PR some change were isolated in separate PR:

• Adding Playwright tests : Add playwright create/login test for all db #4369
• Using JWT refresh token (outside of SSO mainly add an expiration logix) : JWT Refresh Token #4371

⚠️⚠️ ⚠️ If you have issues or need help testing the PR ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️

Please open issues in Timshel/vaultwarden in order to keep the discussion here focused on merging this work.
Of course if you believe your issue is important mention this PR so a reference will be visible.

But please try to keep commenting in this PR to a minimum to keep it legible, the previous one has over 200 comments ...

[derfabianpeter]

Super happy to see this PR being worked on. We (ayedo.de) would be willing to offer a sponsoring to prioritize this PR if that helps! Just reach out.

[Timshel]

Just added a configuration example for Gitlab which might be one of easiest way to test this PR :).

[AkechiShiro]

Hi @Timshel, thanks for your amazing and prolonged work on this feature, is this PR close to be in a ready merge-able state or is there a lot of work left?
I see the latest commit is about documentation, so, all issues mentioned at the beginning were fixed in some way or another ? Or there are still issue to fix ?

[Timshel]

Mainly waiting for maintainer review/feedback now :).

[ruben-herold]

@Timshel thx for your work!!! Hope this will be integrated soon

[pellux-network]

Hoping this gets merged soon!

[AkechiShiro]

Tagging some maintainers for review on this PR, if they have the available time resource to do so @BlackDex @dani-garcia

EDIT: I don't understand the thumbs-down, because tagging maintainers doesn't mean they have time to handle the PR or review it, it's just a way to mention them, if they don't answer/go MIA, or whatever, feel free to fork on this PR and maintain your own forks, no one is entitled to do any work, they don't want to.

[BlackDex]

I do not have much time actually.

Also, I'm a bit puzzled with all the different SSO PR's.
And I am a bit hesitant to merge one if that for some reason could break the other or has a totally different way of working.
I'm not sure what to do here because i see people want something like this, but there are multiple ways of getting this working it looks like.

One way would be to create a semi-supported release branch which contains SSO support, but that could get messy keeping it up-to-date. What do you think @dani-garcia ?

[Timshel]

? As mentioned this is the continuation of the previous PRs, it all rely on openidconnect. All of those PR are based on the previous ones when the previous PR owner stopped maintaining it.

I can´t speak for the owner of previous PRs but I believe this make all the others redundant. You could probably close the previous one referencing this one and encourage their owner to reopen if something is missing.

Thanks @bmunro-peralex for closing his PR to make things more legible and of course for his work which is present in this PR :).

[xoxys]

Why not finally add at least one way to support OIDC? You can also flag it as preview feature or something like this to get feedback from the community, but not getting this feature into Vaultwarden after multiple PRs were provided by the community without a review or without getting merged for months until the authors then gave up feels wrong to me for an open source project.

[BlackDex]

Why not finally add at least one way to support OIDC? You can also flag it as preview feature or something like this to get feedback from the community, but not getting this feature into Vaultwarden after multiple PRs were provided by the community without a review or without getting merged for months until the authors then gave up feels wrong to me for an open source project.

Well, because One way could be a different way then the others, or could cause a lot of other changes needed to be done if they do not match, or maybe even could overlap and do something totally different. 49 FIles are changed, so I'm not going to be happy if there needs to be major rework done because of adding this feature which is not fully working/supported.

You have to keep in mind that this could break other code in some way. But as said before, i do not have much time to check and validate this. And this is a huge PR and a lot of testing needs to be done, and i this is not specifically on my prio list for now actually. That is why i mentioned a special branch, which builds this version with a different tag and not fully supported in terms of issues with the login from my side.

[Timshel]

Well, because One way could be a different way then the others, or could cause a lot of other changes needed to be done if they do not match, or maybe even could overlap and do something totally different.

@BlackDex I'll insist but there is no other way (At least not in the currently opened PRs). All those PR are based on the previous ones. They got more refined each time as someone picked-it up.

[tschuyebuhl]

is there any way one can help with testing? or anything that can be done to help get this merged?

[isaiah-v]

I've been watching the progress of this feature. I can't wait for it, but out of curiosity, how does decryption work with this feature? Is it still client side? How do you now decrypt without knowing the password?

[Timshel]

@isaiah-v as mentioned a master password is still required. There is no change on this point.

[Timshel]

@BlackDex thinking on it I don´t think the semi-supported branch is a good idea.

Main issue for people running this branch is that there might be some change in the migrations that might force to correct DB state manually. Even if it's not difficult (cf Timshel/vaultwarden#db-migration), integrating in a separate branch would not help with this.

Additionally unless you grant me commit rights it means that this would make it more complicated for me to support it and if you have no time for review I can't see how you would semi-support it.

It's important to note that the SSO_ENABLED config act as feature flag, the impact on the non sso version is quite low so merging this should have a low risk for the non sso users.

In the end if people are not running it at the moment it might be because they are waiting for an easier way to run this (but I made updates on main@Timshel/vaultwarden to make it easier) but I would expect it's mainly because they are waiting for it to be reviewed, a solution without any review would not be worth much ...

Since I'm running this myself I will maintain this branch/PR, and will continue to update main@Timshel/vaultwarden with anything I can think of to help people running it. As mentioned before if you have any question don't hesitate but please open it on Timshel/vaultwarden to prevent spamming here (of course mention this PR if you think your issue is important).

In my opinion the next step is for it to be reviewed and then integrated (maybe without being promoted at first).

[AkechiShiro]

I will definitely try to host the branch of your fork that contains sso-support and see if I run into any issues, I will report them on your repo @Timshel

[dandanthedev]

+1, please merge!

[griefie]

It seems that there is a lot of hesitation on investing time into reviewing this and i can understand this. However - the longer the delay the bigger the diff guys. The branch clearly works and simply needs a bit more love. Besides it already looks like a lot of work went into this and the older preceding branches. Why not make it a beta build? Even 2.0.0-beta? The closer it is to the main stream, the quicker will be the feedback and the improvement. Let's not forget this is open source, where ideas thrive and not corporate where ideas die ;)

[derfabianpeter]

We're still happy to sponsor this PR if it helps

[Timshel]

Rebased and added the @BlackDex suggestion in #3154 (comment) to make the SSO button visible when running the docker-compose.

[rizlas]

I'm running vaultwarden in kubernetes with and without @Timshel additions just fine. No problem in the dockerization.

Helm charts, on the other hand, can be a source of errors if the templating is incorrect or something else. e.g. It is not uncommon to find errors in bitnami's charts.

I guess that helm here is completely off topic.

[binaryben]

TBH, I expected more of a "thank you".

Thank you Mathijs, Daniel and Timshel for this incredible project and PR. @Ornias1993 you are borderline advertising and being rude after a valid request to move the convo elsewhere. You then go on to make a similar point yourself (see quote below). Not sure how you can expect thanks with an attitude like that. Timshel is well within expected practices to have questions and concerns. Just answer them with the same politeness if you are genuinely interested in helping, no need for snark.

But that doesn't belong here.

Exactly.

[mejo-]

Thank you Mathijs, Daniel and Timshel for this incredible project and PR.

Full agreement, thanks so much ❤️

@Ornias1993 you are borderline advertising and being rude after a valid request to move the convo elsewhere.

Phew, why so rude? @Ornias1993 just communicated that they're going to provide a HelmChart based on this PR and that this will result in more testing of it. That's a great contribution in my opinion. I think the communication between him and Timshel was a bit led by missunderstanding. Everyone, please assume good faith 😉

[binaryben]

That's a great contribution in my opinion

On the face of this POV, sure - I agree. Expecting gratitude only without any further comments is concerning though, especially after disregarding a simple request to move the convo to a better location. Maintaining OSS is hard. Respecting an authors simple request for something that make their lives easier is kind of a basic decency. I tolerate a lot and almost always assume good faith, but will still call out unneeded disrespect. I think there is more nuance in the reply to Timshel that you may not see? It smells of entitlement (or worse, but this is me assuming good faith), which is a massive problem in OSS. Not the convo for here though, so let's move on.

[mgundelfinger]

Not the convo for here though, so let's move on.

This should be the main takeaway here. If anyone has anything else to add or think they need to defend themselves or call out others: Don't. Do it privately if you must, but this here just isn't the place for that. I'm sure we'd much rather get notifications from this thread that are about the PR itself 💜

[Ornias1993]

@binaryben to be clear: I did not expect or demand gratitude. I just tried to explain that I expected a more "supportive" response.

kinda agree with @mejo- that this was most-likely mostly a complete communitation fbar between me and Timshel and there was no need to start accusations of advertising and being purposefully unfriendly, entitled and/or uncollaborative.

I wanted to add some value and contribute to this effort, within my specific area of expertise. Which is: running helm-charts and kubernetes clusters.

---

Edit:
@binaryben do want to add that I don't appreciated being threated like my intentions where bad, when I spend some of my limited time on attempting to add value to a PR.

@mgundelfinger Agreed, shame our comments coincided.

[Ornias1993]

I'm running vaultwarden in kubernetes with and without @Timshel additions just fine. No problem in the dockerization.

Cool, I'll work on throw the Timshel additions up on my cluster this week to test them out and document the process.

Helm charts, on the other hand, can be a source of errors if the templating is incorrect or something else. e.g. It is not uncommon to find errors in bitnami's charts.

Agreed, thats why I look forward to testing how-well this runs as a "drop-in-replacement".
I'll write some automated tests right away to ensure it's pushed through our testing stack as well.

[Ornias1993]

@rizlas Found at least one issue where the container by @Timshel deviates from the source that is of-value to kubernetes users:

Vaultwarden normally runs fine with "ReadOnlyRootFilesystem" enabled, however the Timshell container relies on being able to write to the root filesystem to create a webvault symlink.

I assume this is not going to be an issue in the release, but is relevant for users trying to test this on kubernetes with full-security enabled.

[sandervandegeijn]

I have met with our penetration testing partner today. We will receive a quote to:

• Do a black box test
• Do a white box test
• Do an audit on the hosting environment

With the emphasis on the white box test. Rust is an odd one for them, but they are looking into it. We can't submit the whole report to the community but we can share the individual issues that they might find. If the quote is reasonable we will execute the test when the merge has been done.

[Ornias1993]

We can't submit the whole report to the community

May I ask why?
It might be worthwhile to have a version with everything user-specific carefully redacted...

its great either though, I'm also looking at setting up a hosted environment for more users...
and more testing is definately great for that!

[sandervandegeijn]

Long story short: legal stuff. Can't do too much about that, but you can trust us to share all relevant details with the community. That's in everybody's best interest including ours :)

Forgot to mention, there will be focus on the OIDC as well of course.

[FabioSpagna]

Hello,

Do you have any idea when this option will be available in the main project?

I believe that all checks have been passed and it just needs a double check.

This feature would help avoid some of my headaches.

Thank you,
Fabio

[Ornias1993]

Hello,

Do you have any idea when this option will be available in the main project?

I believe that all checks have been passed and it just needs a double check.

This feature would help avoid some of my headaches.

Thank you, Fabio

How about you put some effort in and actually read the last dozen or two responses here?
If its so important to you, you could put in that minimal effort.

[FabioSpagna]

Hello,
Do you have any idea when this option will be available in the main project?
I believe that all checks have been passed and it just needs a double check.
This feature would help avoid some of my headaches.
Thank you, Fabio

How about you put some effort in and actually read the last dozen or two responses here? If its so important to you, you could put in that minimal effort.

I've asked because I didn't fund a clear answer. (I'm very sorry in case it was present)
However, based on what you wrote, I can understand that the answer is "NO", there isn't any plan.
Fabio

[KornKalle]

I have just set up the oidc fork via Helm. Kudos for the good work @Timshel. Everything seems to be running fine about the sole SSO Authentication.

But for my use-case (a medium-sized NGO with potentially ~4k users) it is not going far enough and keeps things too complicated for us.
I don't really see the benefit of adding OIDC authentication here, as there is currently no possibility to "seamlessly" enroll users.
It is fine and understandable that users still need to set a master password (though we would be also fine when there would be another solution), but the rest of the flow is doubling the work you usually want to handle via an IDP to my understanding including the deprovisioning of groups.
Currently we would still have to create an organization manually beforehand and the user/org admin still needs to confirm the invitation. This is redundant for our use case as application access and group/org membership is handled centrally through our IDP, so it should be straightforward to add a user to a group with Vaultwarden access on our IDP to grant access to the respective organization vaults (and also being able to revoke access).

Let me know if I can help you with anything our I can provide further details. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with Rust development.

[jonathanmohamed]

@KornKalle I agree with you.
Most things we can get by with. We only have ~80 users. Needing to confirm each user is not ideal, or from a logical (from a user flow perspective). If I have already sent an invite to them, it should auto add/confirm them, since the link in the email invite is tokenized and only for that email to join the org.

In your case it is for sure not feasible at a large scale of 4k users.

Keyconnector (unlocking the vault with SSO) is something I already requested in his branch, but he needs more people to have an interest in it before he invests time into it.

I've been clear about offering a donation for that feature.

Essentially, what we want is SAML, and this PR is strictly SSO. And I completely understand that was not the intention of this PR.

[Timshel]

@KornKalle if you want more advanced user management you might want to have a look at the directory connector. I never used it but it's listed as supported

[rizlas]

I also add that @Timshel already developed things like "invite auto accept" and sso roles but they are not gonna be into this PR.

As said multiple times there is already enough work to be checked and I think it is enough for the scope of vaultwarden (for now).

[KornKalle]

Yes, for the sake of keeping it reviewable and integration this is a very good first step. Thanks for the information @Timshel, I will have a look at it

[sandervandegeijn]

Long story short: legal stuff. Can't do too much about that, but you can trust us to share all relevant details with the community. That's in everybody's best interest including ours :)

Forgot to mention, there will be focus on the OIDC as well of course.

Our pentest-partner will send us the quote in the coming week so I could use some sort of a timetable to reserve the time on their side. I truly don't care if it's tomorrow or in three months, anything is fine, but is it possible to provide a rough ETA on when this will be merged?

From experience: functionality wise we are very happy with the build from @Timshel - it's working like a gem.

[Stankye]

Commit f472af14509eb7830919adbe612df6480b218654 is failing vigilant mode.

Is this intended?

[Timshel]

I would say expected since it's a merge commit with multiple co-authors that I'm rebasing (It's the initial work done by various authors of previous PRs).