Authelia : The Single Sign-On Multi-Factor Portal For Web Apps

Authelia is an open-source authentication and authorization server providing 2-factor authentication and single sign-on (SSO) for your applications via a web portal.

It acts as a companion of reverse proxies like nginx, Traefik or HAProxy to let them know whether queries should pass through. Unauthenticated user are redirected to Authelia Sign-in portal instead.

The architecture is shown in the diagram below.

It can be installed as a standalone service from the AUR, using a Static binary, Docker or can also be deployed easily on Kubernetes leveraging ingress controllers and ingress configuration.

Here is what Authelia’s portal looks like

Features Summary

Here is the list of the main available features:

• Several kind of second factor:
  • Security Key (U2F) with Yubikey.
  • Time-based One-Time password with Google Authenticator.
  • Mobile Push Notifications with Duo.
• Password reset with identity verification using email confirmation.
• Single-factor only authentication method available.
• Access restriction after too many authentication attempts.
• Fine-grained access control per subdomain, user, resource and network.
• Support of basic authentication for endpoints protected by single factor.
• Highly available using a remote database and Redis as a highly available KV store.
• Compatible with Kubernetes ingress-nginx controller out of the box.

For more details about the features, follow Features.

Proxy Support

Authelia works in combination with nginx, Traefik or HAProxy. It can be deployed on bare metal with Docker or on top of Kubernetes.

Getting Started

You can start utilising Authelia with the provided docker-compose bundles:

• Local

The Local compose bundle is intended to test Authelia without worrying about configuration. It’s meant to be used for scenarios where the server is not be exposed to the internet. Domains will be defined in the local hosts file and self-signed certificates will be utilised.

• Lite

The Lite compose bundle is intended for scenarios where the server will be exposed to the internet, domains and DNS will need to be setup accordingly and certificates will be generated through LetsEncrypt. The Lite element refers to minimal external dependencies; File based user storage, SQLite based configuration storage. In this configuration, the service will not scale well.

• Full

The Full compose bundle is intended for scenarios where the server will be exposed to the internet, domains and DNS will need to be setup accordingly and certificates will be generated through LetsEncrypt. The Full element refers to a scalable setup which includes external dependencies; LDAP based user storage, Database based configuration storage (MariaDB, MySQL or Postgres).

Deployment

Now that you have tested Authelia and you want to try it out in your own infrastructure, you can learn how to deploy and use it with Deployment. This guide will show you how to deploy it on bare metal as well as on Kubernetes.

Security

Authelia takes security very seriously. We follow the rule of responsible disclosure, and we encourage the community to as well.

If you discover a vulnerability in Authelia, please first contact one of the maintainers privately either via Matrix or email as described in the contact options below.

For details about security measures implemented in Authelia, please follow this link and for reading about the threat model follow this link.

Contact Options

• Matrix

Join the Matrix Room and locate one of the maintainers. You can identify them as they are the room administrators. Alternatively you can just ask for one of the maintainers. Once you’ve made contact we ask you privately message the maintainer to communicate the vulnerability.

• Email

You can contact any of the maintainers for security vulnerability related issues by emailing security@authelia.com. This email is strictly reserved for security and vulnerability disclosure related matters. If you need to contact us for another reason please use Matrix or team@authelia.com.