pomerium/docs/guides/nginx.md

title	lang	meta	description
Nginx	en-US	name content keywords pomerium, identity access proxy, nginx	This guide covers how to use Pomerium to protect services behind an nginx proxy.

Securing Nginx

This recipe's sources can be found on github

At the end, you will have a locally running install of verify behind nginx with policy enforced by Pomerium.

Background

Nginx can be configured to authorize requests by calling an external authorization service. Pomerium is compatible with this external authentication protocol and can thus be used to protect services behind nginx. In this configuration, Pomerium does not proxy traffic, but authorizes it on behalf of nginx. This is useful for integrating into existing load balancer infrastructure.

For more information on using Pomerium as an external authorization endpoint, see forward auth in the Pomerium docs.

How It Works

• Create a standard pomerium configuration to authenticate against your identity provider (IdP)
• Configure nginx to authorize incoming requests via pomerium
• Pomerium authenticates users via IdP
• Nginx queries Pomerium on each request to verify the traffic is authorized
• Pomerium verifies the traffic against policy, responding to nginx
• Nginx proxies the traffic or responds with an error

Pre-requisites

This recipe is designed to run on a local docker-compose instance. The included configuration can be adopted for any nginx deployment.

• docker
• docker-compose
• A copy of the example repo checked out
• Valid credentials for your OIDC provider
• (Optional) mkcert to generate locally trusted certificates

Certificates (optional)

This demo comes with its own certificates, but they will generate warnings in your browser. You may instead provide your own or use mkcert to generate locally trusted certificates.

After installing mkcert, run the following inside the example repo:

mkcert -install
   mkcert '*.localhost.pomerium.io'

This will install a trusted CA and generate a new wildcard certificate:

• _wildcard.localhost.pomerium.io.pem
• _wildcard.localhost.pomerium.io-key.pem

To provide your own certificates through another mechanism, please overwrite these files or update docker-compose.yaml accordingly.

Configure

Pomerium

Update config.yaml with your IdP settings and desired policy

<<< @/examples/nginx/config.yaml

Nginx - pomerium

Nginx configuration for Pomerium endpoints

<<< @/examples/nginx/pomerium.conf

Nginx - verify

Nginx configuration for the protected endpoint

<<< @/examples/nginx/verify.conf

Docker Compose

<<< @/examples/nginx/docker-compose.yaml

Run docker-compose up. After a few seconds, browse to verify.localhost.pomerium.io.

You should be prompted to log in through your IdP and then granted access to the deployed verify instance.

That's it!

Your verify install is protected by Pomerium.

Adapting

To re-use the configuration in this demo in other contexts:

• Update verify.conf to reflect the correct forward auth URL in location @error401
• Update pomerium.conf to reflect the pomerium hostname(s) or IP(s) in upstream pomerium
• Update pomerium.conf to reflect your pomerium authenticate and forward auth hostnames in server_name