Login into the Dashboard using Okta - Guide

This is an end-to-end worked example of how you can use Okta and our Tyk Identity Broker (TIB) to log in to your Dashboard. This guide assumes the following:

You already have authorised access to Tyk’s Dashboard. If you haven’t, get the authorisation key by following this doc.
For simplicity, you are running TIB locally on port 3010
You are able to edit TIB’s configuration file.

Okta’s side

Create a developer account on the Okta Developer site. You’ll get a domain such as https://<okta-org>.okta.com/.well-known/openid-configuration
Login and create a Web Application as follows:
- Under Application, click Add Application
- Choose Web
- Change the name of the app
- Tick Authorization Code
- Click Done
Note: These instruction are for the new Okta’s Developer Console, for the Classic UI instructions are slightly different.
Add a callback to TIB in your application:
- Under General, click Edit and update the Login redirect URIs field with the endpoint on TIB http://localhost:3010/auth/{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB}/openid-connect/callback.
- {PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB} - this can be any string you choose, as long as you use the same one for the profile in TIB.
Permissions to login via Okta: Under the Assignments tab, make sure group assignments is set to everyone (for now, you will change this later!).
This is how it should look like after step #4

TIB’s Side

Set the profile in profiles.json as follows:
- Copy from your Okta client the cliend ID to ProviderConfig.UseProviders[].key
- Copy from your Okta client the Client secret to ProviderConfig.UseProviders[].secret
- Add Okta’s discovery url "https://<okta-org>.okta.com/.well-known/openid-configuration" to ProviderConfig.UseProviders[].DiscoverURL
Example of a profiles.json file:

[{
  "ActionType": "GenerateOrLoginUserProfile",
  "ID": "{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB}",
  "OrgID": "5a54a74550200d0001975584",
  "IdentityHandlerConfig": {
    "DashboardCredential": "{DASHBOARD-SECRET}"
  },
  "ProviderConfig": {
    "CallbackBaseURL": "http://{TIB-DOMAIN}:{TIB-PORT}",
    "FailureRedirect": "http://{DASHBOARD-DOMAIN}:{DASHBOARD-PORT}/?fail=true",
    "UseProviders": [
    {
      "Key": "{Okta-App-Client-ID}",
      "Secret": "{Okta-App-Client-SECRET}",
      "Scopes": ["openid", "email"],
      "DiscoverURL": "https://<okta-org>.okta.com/.well-known/openid-configuration",
      "Name": "openid-connect"
    }
  ]
  },
  "ProviderName": "SocialProvider",
  "ReturnURL": "http://{DASHBOARD-DOMAIN}:{DASHBOARD-PORT}/tap",
  "Type": "redirect"
}]

Start TIB by running the binary (profiles.json is in the same CWD) See Install TIB for detailed instructions on how to install TIB
Test that it works: From the broswer call http://localhost:3010/auth/{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB}/openid-connect
- If it’s working you’ll be redirected to Okta’s web page and will be asked to enter your Okta user name and password.
- If you were successfully authenticated by Okta then you’ll be redirected to the Tyk Dashboard and login into it without going through the login page. Job’s done!
If you need to update your profile then you can use TIB’s REST API as follows:

curl http://{TIB-DOMAIN}:{TIB-PORT}/api/profiles/{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB} -H "Authorization: {MY-SECRET}" -H "Content-type: application/json" -X PUT --data "@./my-new-dashboard-profile.json" | prettyjson

POST and DELETE calls apply as normal
You can post a few profiles to TIB.
See TIB REST API for more details.

The magic - The flow behind the scenes:

The initial call to the endpoint on TIB was redirected to Okta
Okta identified the user
Okta redirected the call back to TIB endpoint (according to the callback you set up on the client earlier in step 3) and from TIB
TIB, via REST API call to the dashboard, created a nonce and a special session attached to it.
TIB redirected the call to the dashboard to a special endpoint /tap ( it was defined on the profile under ReturnURL) with the nonce that was created.
The Dashboard on the /tap endpoint finds the session that is attached to the nonce, login the user and redirect to the dashboard first page

Enhancements

Once it’s working you can also add two more enhancements - SSO and MFA

You will need to: - set up a web server with a login page and a form for user and password - Update tyk_analytics.conf to redirect logins to that url Explicit details are in steps 6-7

Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA) Support

MFA works out-of-the-box in Tyk since luckily Okta supports it. you would need to add it to the configuration of the account holder. Under Security --> Multifactor --> Factor types you can choose the types you want. For instance I chose Google Authenticator.

While trying to login to the Dashboard, Okta enforced the MFA and asked me to use the Google Authenticator:
I had to download the Google Authenticator and identify with the generated code
I successfully authenticated with Google Authenticator

Common Error

If you get a 400 Bad Request it means the profile name in the login endpoint is not identical to the profile name in the callback that you set up on Okta’s app:

On Okta’s app - Login redirect URIs: http://localhost:3010/auth/{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB}/openid-connect/callback.
The endpoint to test - http://localhost:3010/auth/{PROFILE-NAME-IN-TIB}/openid-connect

okta-bad-request-wrong-callback

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