Istio security mTLS and Request authentication
Istio is an open source service mesh platform that which is a dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication within a distributed application. It provides features like traffic management, observability, security, and resilience without requiring changes to the application code.
Service meshes address challenges in managing microservices architectures by offering centralized control over communication, improving reliability through features like circuit breaking and retries, enhancing security with mutual TLS, and providing visibility into service interactions.
Virtual Services
Virtual services in Istio define how incoming requests to a service should be routed to different versions or subsets of that service. They enable sophisticated traffic management strategies like A/B testing and canary deployments.
Destination Rules
Destination rules in Istio configure the traffic policies applied to the traffic destined for a particular service version or subset. They define things like load balancing algorithms, circuit breaking settings, and TLS settings for communication between services.
Circuit Breaking
Circuit breaking is a pattern used to prevent cascading failures in distributed systems. In Istio, it involves setting thresholds for error rates or latency, and if these thresholds are exceeded, requests to a service are automatically stopped, preventing further damage.
mTLS (mutual Transport Layer Security) and request authentication are both mechanisms for securing communication within a distributed system like Istio, but they operate at different layers and serve distinct purposes
mTLS (Mutual Transport Layer Security):
Layer: mTLS operates at the transport layer (Layer 4) of the OSI model.
Purpose: mTLS encrypts communication between services and ensures both authentication and data integrity. It establishes a secure communication channel by encrypting data in transit and mutually authenticating both the client and the server (in this case, the sidecar proxies in Istio).
How it works in Istio: Istio automatically generates X.509 certificates for each service and manages the issuance, distribution, and rotation of these certificates. Sidecar proxies use these certificates to establish secure connections and verify the identity of other services within the mesh.
Request Authentication:
Layer: Request authentication typically operates at the application layer (Layer 7) of the OSI model.
Purpose: Request authentication focuses on authenticating and authorizing individual requests based on various criteria such as user identity, API keys, JWT tokens, or OAuth tokens. It ensures that only authenticated and authorized requests are allowed to access specific resources or perform certain actions.
How it works in Istio: Istio provides various mechanisms for request authentication, such as JWT (JSON Web Tokens) authentication, OAuth authentication, and API key authentication. These mechanisms allow users to enforce authentication policies at the ingress gateway or service level, ensuring that only authenticated requests are forwarded to the appropriate backend services.
Authorization Policy:
An Authorization Policy in Istio is a resource that allows you to define and enforce access control rules within the service mesh. It determines whether a request should be allowed or denied based on specific criteria such as the identity of the requester, the requested operation, or custom attributes associated with the request. Authorization policies are typically applied at the ingress gateway or service level and enable fine-grained access control over traffic flowing through the mesh.
Implicit enablement , when no authz policies present , all traffic allowed.
one or More ALLOW present , traffic denied unless explicitly authorized via ALLOW policies
DENY policies evaluated first
Multiple policies will be aggregated
Reference :- https://youtu.be/aVsvL9EClHU?si=JAsVAE9ESv4Xa-iH