teleport/docs/4.2/ssh_okta.md

SSH Authentication with Okta

This guide will cover how to configure Okta to issue SSH credentials to specific groups of users. When used in combination with role based access control (RBAC), it allows SSH administrators to define policies like:

• Only members of "DBA" group can SSH into machines running PostgreSQL.
• Developers must never SSH into production servers.

!!! warning "Version Warning"

This guide requires a commercial edition of Teleport. The open source
edition of Teleport only supports [Github](admin-guide.md#github-oauth-20) as
an SSO provider.

Enable SAML Authentication

First, configure Teleport auth server to use SAML authentication instead of the local user database. Update /etc/teleport.yaml as shown below and restart the teleport daemon.

auth_service:
    authentication:
        type: saml

Configure Okta

First, create a SAML 2.0 Web App in Okta configuration section

Create Groups

We are going to create two groups: "okta-dev" and "okta-admin":

...and the admin:

Configure the App

We are going to map the Okta groups we've created above to the SAML Attribute statements (special signed metadata exposed via a SAML XML response).

GENERAL

• Single sign on URL https://teleport-proxy.example.com:3080/v1/webapi/saml/acs
• Audience URI (SP Entity ID)https://teleport-proxy.example.com:3080/v1/webapi/saml/acs
• Name ID format EmailAddress
• Application username Okta username

GROUP ATTRIBUTE STATEMENTS

• Name: groups | Name format: Unspecified
• Filter: Matches regex | .*

!!! tip "Important"

Notice that we have set "NameID" to the email format and mapped the groups with
a wildcard regex in the Group Attribute statements. We have also set the "Audience"
and SSO URL to the same value.

Assign Groups

Assign groups and people to your SAML app:

Make sure to download the metadata in the form of an XML document. It will be used it to configure a Teleport connector:

Create a SAML Connector

Now, create a SAML connector resource:

# okta-connector.yaml
kind: saml
version: v2
metadata:
  name: OktaSAML
spec:
  # display allows to set the caption of the "login" button
  # in the Web interface
  display: "Okta SSO"

  acs: https://teleport-proxy.example.com:3080/v1/webapi/saml/acs
  attributes_to_roles:
    - {name: "groups", value: "okta-admin", roles: ["admin"]}
    - {name: "groups", value: "okta-dev", roles: ["dev"]}
  entity_descriptor: |
    <paste SAML XML contents here>    

Create the connector using tctl tool:

$ tctl create okta-connector.yaml

Create Teleport Roles

We are going to create 2 roles, privileged role admin who is able to login as root and is capable of administrating the cluster and non-privileged dev.

kind: role
version: v3
metadata:
  name: admin
spec:
  options:
    max_session_ttl: 24h
  allow:
    logins: [root]
    node_labels:
      "*": "*"
    rules:
      - resources: ["*"]
        verbs: ["*"]

The developer role:

kind: role
version: v3
metadata:
  name: dev
spec:
  options:
    max_session_ttl: 24h
  allow:
    logins: [ "{% raw %}{{external.username}}{% endraw %}", ubuntu ]
    node_labels:
      access: relaxed

• Devs are only allowed to login to nodes labelled with access: relaxed label.
• Developers can log in as ubuntu user
• Notice {% raw %}{{external.username}}{% endraw %} login. It configures Teleport to look at "username" Okta claim and use that field as an allowed login for each user.
• Developers also do not have any "allow rules" i.e. they will not be able to see/replay past sessions or re-configure the Teleport cluster.

Now, create both roles on the auth server:

$ tctl create admin.yaml
$ tctl create dev.yaml

Testing

The Web UI will now contain a new button: "Login with Okta". The CLI is the same as before:

$ tsh --proxy=proxy.example.com login

This command will print the SSO login URL (and will try to open it automatically in a browser).

!!! tip "Tip"

Teleport can use multiple SAML connectors. In this case a connector name
can be passed via `tsh login --auth=connector_name`

!!! note "IMPORTANT"

Teleport only supports sending party initiated flows for SAML 2.0. This
means you can not initiate login from your identity provider, you have to
initiate login from either the Teleport Web UI or CLI.

Troubleshooting

If you get "access denied errors" the number one place to check is the audit log on the Teleport auth server. It is located in /var/lib/teleport/log by default and it will contain the detailed reason why a user's login was denied.

Some errors (like filesystem permissions or misconfigured network) can be diagnosed using Teleport's stderr log, which is usually available via:

$ sudo journalctl -fu teleport

If you wish to increase the verbosity of Teleport's syslog, you can pass --debug flag to teleport start command.