Book Image

Keycloak - Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications

By : Stian Thorgersen, Pedro Igor Silva
Book Image

Keycloak - Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications

By: Stian Thorgersen, Pedro Igor Silva

Overview of this book

Implementing authentication and authorization for applications can be a daunting experience, often leaving them exposed to security vulnerabilities. Keycloak is an open-source solution for identity management and access management for modern applications, which can make a world of difference if you learn how to use it. Keycloak, helping you get started with using it and securing your applications. Complete with hands-on tutorials, best practices, and self-assessment questions, this easy-to-follow guide will show you how to secure a sample application and then move on to securing different application types. As you progress, you will understand how to configure and manage Keycloak as well as how to leverage some of its more advanced capabilities. Finally, you'll gain insights into securely using Keycloak in production. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to install and manage Keycloak as well as how to secure new and existing applications.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Keycloak
4
Section 2: Securing Applications with Keycloak
11
Section 3: Configuring and Managing Keycloak
17
Section 4: Security Considerations

Authenticating a user

The most common way to authenticate a user with Keycloak is through the OpenID Connect authorization code flow.

In summary, to authenticate a user with this flow, an application redirects to Keycloak, which displays a login page to authenticate the user. After the user has authenticated, the application receives an ID token, which contains information about the user.

In the following diagram, the authorization code flow is shown in more detail:

Figure 4.3 – The authorization code flow

The steps from the diagram are explained in more detail as follows:

  1. The user clicks on a login button in the application.
  2. The application generates an authentication request.
  3. The authentication request is sent to the user in form of a 302 redirect, instructing the user-agent to redirect to the authorization endpoint provided by Keycloak.
  4. The user-agent opens the authorization endpoint with the query parameters specified by...