How To Integrate Okta SSO with Chainguard

The Chainguard platform supports Single sign-on (SSO) authentication for users. By default, users can log in with GitHub, GitLab and Google, but SSO support allows users to bring their own identity provider for authentication.

This guide outlines how to create an Okta application and integrate it with Chainguard. After completing this guide, you’ll be able to log in to Chainguard using Okta and will no longer be limited to the default SSO options.

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you will need the following.

• chainctl installed on your system. Follow our guide on How To Install chainctl if you don’t already have this installed.
• An Okta account over which you have administrative access.

Create an Okta App integration

To integrate your Okta identity provider with the Chainguard platform, log in to Okta and navigate to the Applications landing page in the Admin console. There, click the Create App Integration button.

Select OIDC - OpenID Connect as the sign-in method and Web Application as the application type.

Next, in the General Settings window, configure the application as follows.

• App integration name: Enter a descriptive name (like “Chainguard”) here.
• Logo: You can optionally add a Chainguard logo icon here to help your users visually identify this integration. If you’d like, you can use the icon from the Chainguard Console.
• Grant type: Ensure that the grant type is set to Authorization Code only.

Warning: DO NOT select other grant types as this may compromise your security.

• Sign-in redirect URIs: Set the redirect URI to https://issuer.enforce.dev/oauth/callback
• Sign-out redirect URIs: This will have a URI field set to http://localhost:8080 by default. Click the X icon to remove the sign-out redirect entirely, leaving this field blank.

Click the Save button. Then, select the Sign On tab. Find the OpenID Connect ID Token section and click the Edit button.

Set the Issuer option to Okta URL, then click the Save button.

That completes our configuration of the Okta Application. Next, we need to configure the Chainguard platform to use our Okta application.

Configuring Chainguard to use Okta SSO

Now that your Okta application is ready, you can create the custom identity provider.

First, log in to Chainguard with chainctl, using an OIDC provider like Google, GitHub, or GitLab to bootstrap your account.

chainctl auth login

Note that this bootstrap account can be used as a backup account (that is, a backup account you can use to log in if you ever lose access to your primary account). However, if you prefer to remove this role-binding after configuring the custom IDP, you may also do so.

To configure the platform, make a note of the following settings from your Okta Application:

• Client ID: You can find this on the General tab under Client Credentials
• Client Secret: Find this on the General Tab under Client Credentials
• Issuer URL: This is found under the Sign on tab in the OpenID Connect ID Token section

You will also need the UIDP for the Chainguard organization under which you want to install the identity provider. Your selection won’t affect how your users authenticate but will have implications on who has permission to modify the SSO configuration.

You can retrieve a list of all Chainguard organizations you belong to — along with their UIDPs — with the following command.

chainctl iam organizations ls -o table

                         	ID                         	|  	  NAME    |	DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------+-------------+---------------------
  59156e77fb23e1e5ebcb1bd9c5edae471dd85c43              | sample_org  |
  . . .                                                 | . . .       |

Note down the ID value for your chosen organization.

With this information in hand, create a new identity provider with the following commands.

export NAME=okta
export CLIENT_ID=<your client id here>
export CLIENT_SECRET=<your client secret here>
export ISSUER=<your issuer url here>
export ORG=<your organization UIDP here>
chainctl iam identity-provider create \
  --configuration-type=OIDC \
  --oidc-client-id=${CLIENT_ID} \
  --oidc-client-secret=${CLIENT_SECRET} \
  --oidc-issuer=${ISSUER} \
  --oidc-additional-scopes=email \
  --oidc-additional-scopes=profile \
  --parent=${ORG} \
  --default-role=viewer \
  --name=${NAME}

Note the --default-role option. This defines the default role granted to users registering with this identity provider. This example specifies the viewer role, but depending on your needs you might choose editor or owner. If you don’t include this option, you’ll be prompted to specify the role interactively. For more information, refer to the IAM and Security section of our Introduction to Custom Identity Providers in Chainguard tutorial.

You can refer to our Generic Integration Guide in our Introduction to Custom Identity Providers article for more information about the chainctl iam identity-provider create command and its required options.

To log in to the Chainguard Console with the new identity provider you just created, navigate to console.chainguard.dev and click Use Your Identity Provider. Next, click Use Your Organization Name and enter the name of the organization associated with the new identity provider. Finally, click the Login with Provider button. This will open up a new window with the Okta login flow, allowing you to complete the login process through there.

You can also use the custom identity provider to log in through chainctl. To do this, run the chainctl auth login command and add the --identity-provider option followed by the identity provider’s ID value:

chainctl auth login --identity-provider <IDP-ID>

The ID value appears in the ID column of the table returned by the chainctl iam identity-provider create command you ran previously. You can also retrieve this table at any time by running chainctl iam identity-provider ls -o table when logged in.