MongoDB X509 Client Authentication

You can use the MongoDB X509 Certificate flow to authenticate the Tyk Dashboard, Tyk Pump, and Tyk MDCB with your MongoDB install. This is similar yet slightly different to AWS DocumentDB setup instructions.

Setting Up

Before we get into the configuration, we need to understand the 2 key components

1. Connection Strings

A) You are required to specify a username (and password if needed) in the connection string. Why do you need a username at all?

B) We need to specify the following parameters: ?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509"

An example of a connection string would be:

"mongodb://CN=tyk-mongo-client,OU=TykTest@<host>:<port>/<db>?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509"

Passwords

If you have to include a password, you can do it after the username via basic auth format:

"mongodb://CN=tyk-mongo-client,OU=TykTest,O=TykTest:mypassword@<host>:<port>/<db>?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509"

URL Encoding Protected Characters

You have to url encode the : character into %40. So replace any : in the username field into the URL encoded version.

2. Certificates

We have two provide two certificates to complete the X509 Client Authentication.

CA Cert, Should contain just the public key of the CA.

Client Cert, Should contain both the public and private key of the client.

Configuration

Here’s what it looks like all put together:

Tyk Dashboard

Your tyk_analytics.conf should include these fields at the root level:

{
  ...
  "mongo_url": "mongodb://<username>@<host>:<port>/<db>?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509",
  "mongo_use_ssl": true,
  "mongo_ssl_ca_file": "ca.pem",
  "mongo_ssl_pem_keyfile": "client.pem"
}

Tyk Pump

There are 3 mongo pumps, mongo, mongo_aggregate, and mongo_selective.

In order to setup X509 certificate authentication with MongoDB, you can add the following tags to the meta section to each of these 3 pumps, ie:

{ 
  ...
  "pumps": {
    "mongo": {
      "type": "mongo",
      "meta": {
        "collection_name": "tyk_analytics",
        "mongo_url": "mongodb://CN=tyk-mongo-client,OU=TykTest@<host>:<port>/<db>?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509",
        "mongo_use_ssl": true,
        "mongo_ssl_ca_file": "ca.pem",
        "mongo_ssl_pem_keyfile": "client.pem"
      }
    }
  }
}

In addition to the other configs, these are the ones related to MongoDB:

Tyk Sink

As of v1.8.0, you can also secure Tyk MDCB/Sink with MongoDB using X509 Certificate Authentication flow.

The config settings are exactly the same as the Tyk Dashboard steps, just nested one level deeper:

Example Config:

{
  ...
  "analytics": {
    "mongo_url": "mongodb://CN=tyk-mongo-client,OU=TykTest@<host>:<port>/<db>?authSource=$external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509",
    "mongo_use_ssl": true,
    "mongo_ssl_ca_file": "ca.pem",
      "mongo_ssl_pem_keyfile": "client.pem"
  }
}