[HN Gopher] Keycloak - Open-Source Identity and Access Managemen...
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       Keycloak - Open-Source Identity and Access Management Interview
        
       Author : ph4ni
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2023-06-18 21:23 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (console.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (console.substack.com)
        
       | kurante wrote:
       | What do folks think about authentik[0]?
       | 
       | I tried to set up Keycloak but after fiddling with it for awhile
       | before giving up and trying something else. It felt really weird
       | that I was just extracting a tar and running a jar instead of
       | some pre-packaged solution, but that might just be me.
       | 
       | authentik was pretty easy to set up for my homelab, but maybe I'm
       | missing something given all the positive recommendations for
       | Keycloak?
       | 
       | [0]: https://goauthentik.io/
        
         | miduil wrote:
         | I was considering using authentik, but I'm not very keen
         | towards having a Django application taking over SSO
         | authentication.
        
         | Jnr wrote:
         | I set up Keycloak using Docker and it was very simple to do.
         | 
         | I did not really try authentik yet since all the advanced
         | features I needed worked with Keycloak, but I do have it
         | running in a container to play with at some point in time.
        
       | adeptima wrote:
       | Would like to cheerlead for fully opensource Zitadel project
       | here.
       | 
       | https://zitadel.com/
       | 
       | https://zitadel.com/team
       | 
       | Main repo https://github.com/zitadel/zitadel
       | 
       | Zitadel team clearly understand OpenID, Auth0, Keypass, etc specs
       | and have all previous experience to implement identity management
       | right for SaaS, B2C and B2B project scenarios.
       | 
       | SaaS Product with Authentication and Authorization
       | https://zitadel.com/docs/guides/solution-scenarios/saas
       | 
       | Simplify Your SaaS: Multi-Tenancy and Delegated Access Management
       | with ZITADEL Organizations
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_WgyY4TOo
       | 
       | ZITADEL Roadmap
       | https://github.com/orgs/zitadel/projects/6/views/1
       | 
       | Zitadel took a very good direction into allowing to "build my own
       | login and register ui"
       | 
       | Sprint Demo - ZITADEL 2.28.0
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpQ4zrV48LY
       | 
       | [Epic] Login API and improvement of Register API #5015
       | https://github.com/zitadel/zitadel/issues/5015
       | 
       | https://github.com/zitadel/typescript
       | 
       | Previously had a look at Ory, Keycloak and many others.
       | 
       | Found those solutions either to be more "enterprisy" and over-
       | engineered rather than something which can co-exist in my small
       | team brain.
        
       | Lucasoato wrote:
       | I'm a bit newbie in this exact field but when Keycloak is used to
       | autenticate an external client, wouldn't revealing that you're
       | using Keycloak itself be a security concern? Giving that
       | information to a possible attacker could be dangerous, is it
       | possible to make it totally impossible to understand if someone
       | is using Keycloak or not?
        
         | precommunicator wrote:
         | Once you're a Keycloak user you can figure out if someone is
         | using Keycloak within seconds, e.g. I know my credit card
         | company uses it. And this isn't a matter of security, security
         | by obscurity is really bad idea.
        
         | Lacerda69 wrote:
         | I dont quite get why you think it would be a security concern?
         | 
         | The alterntive to using a tried and tested solution is to build
         | it yourself - but are you really confident you will do a better
         | job than professionals in the field?
        
       | croo wrote:
       | I worked on a project which used Keycloak for authentication and
       | SSO module between like 10+ java services with a custom UI and
       | custom 2fa solution.
       | 
       | I really liked it. Setting up and using it with LDAP was easy,
       | Google and other sso integration was a search and some settings
       | away, it ran on docker without problems. There were some problems
       | with caching and refreshing user data but that arose from the
       | complex architecture. The keycloak UI was at times a little
       | clunky but the documentation was good.
       | 
       | I would recommend it to anyone.
        
         | rad_gruchalski wrote:
         | > the documentation was good
         | 
         | There's also a book now which I can highly recommend:
         | https://www.amazon.com/Keycloak-Management-Applications-prot...
        
       | golemiprague wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | roboben wrote:
       | I don't get it. Keycloak feels like some clunky 90s enterprise
       | software and I mean it only in a bad way. Had to run it on
       | openshift and it was hell. It's not really made for containers,
       | clustering is basically impossible, it needs to know it's default
       | route and I can't remember the exact issue but found myself
       | patching some obscure startup scripts which templated some XML to
       | start that thing. Can't recommend but I'd be happy to hear
       | alternatives which are actually modern.
        
         | Glyptodon wrote:
         | It's on my list of things that assumes out of the box that you
         | know waaaaaay more about dozens of details than you actually
         | are likely to unless you've already used it for 10 years. To
         | the point that I don't even know what the benefit of using it
         | vs. other options is at all.
        
           | roboben wrote:
           | I can't understand your first sentence even after reading it
           | ten times. Maybe it is too long for me.
           | 
           | To the second sentence: I don't know what the benefit is
           | either but in some environments you are not able to use any
           | cloud provider or other external service to realize the auth
           | layer so you are stuck with things like keycloak. Hope this
           | thread discusses some other solutions which you can self
           | host.
        
             | vxNsr wrote:
             | I know the two main competitors that have been adopted by
             | the self hosted community are authentik and authelia,
             | they're both somewhat under developed for enterprise but at
             | the same time still difficult to grasp for non-full time
             | devOps people. At least in my opinion.
        
               | jsmith99 wrote:
               | I use authentik for self hosted - it's great but still
               | too powerful and configurable for me or most people who
               | are not auth experts to customise. Just creating a
               | password reset flow requires integrating a dozen moving
               | parts. The only explanation how to do it is a yaml file
               | or a YouTube tutorial.
               | 
               | Setting up basic forward auth or OIDC was super easy
               | though.
        
             | Lacerda69 wrote:
             | use cases that require _everything_ "on-premise" are often
             | government/military, big healthcare, or just huge
             | enterprises that want to control everything (and can afford
             | a team that only runs their auth service).
             | 
             | I mentioned Ory above but you get both options - either as
             | a managed service or run on your own infra
        
               | p_l wrote:
               | Or just places that don't want to give data to external,
               | VC-funded or worse, vendors.
               | 
               | I have clients that definitely prefer combination of open
               | source + owner-controlled + lower costs ;)
        
             | nebulousthree wrote:
             | They mean that the software relies on the user
             | understanding its, or the industry-it-serves's, jargon, to
             | be used effectively.
        
         | tecleandor wrote:
         | Were you using Keycloak also as the identity provider?
         | 
         | IIRC, if you're using an external identity provider, and you
         | want clustering, you can just deploy Keycloak containers and
         | load balance between them. You can then load a shared cache if
         | you want (or need).
         | 
         | My memory is fuzzy right now, but although it isn't the leanest
         | solution, I don't remember it as terrible. Ours wasn't a very
         | custom solution anyway, we just hit an LDAP in the back and
         | that was all.
        
         | Delotono wrote:
         | They completely reworked the code base and made it k8s
         | compatible
        
         | Lacerda69 wrote:
         | Have you had a look at Ory (Kratos)? Its a "cloud-
         | native"/modern alternative to Keycloak:
         | https://github.com/ory/kratos
        
           | dijit wrote:
           | I have, and we went back to keycloak- everything the parent
           | says is true, however Ory/Kratos is a lesson in half finished
           | solutions and poor documentation.
           | 
           | we really tried quite hard, since it was backed by CNCF, but
           | it could just be a case of being a tad too immature for prime
           | time.
           | 
           | it seems keycloak is now CNCF though
        
           | rad_gruchalski wrote:
           | Ory Kratos is nowhere near Keycloak. First of all, one needs
           | at least Kratos+Hydra (there's an integration method now out
           | of the box yay) but Keycloak still has a flexibility
           | advantage. Keycloak has many more features out of the box
           | comparing to the complete Ory stack.
           | 
           | The only thing nicer in Kratos from Keycloak is the
           | standalone self-service UI with JSON identity declaration. If
           | someone from the Keycloak team is reading this, please, let's
           | have a talk about bringing that feature to Keycloak, then
           | Keycloak will be perfect. The template approach is a bit of a
           | hassle.
           | 
           | Source: deployed both stacks in production systems.
        
         | rad_gruchalski wrote:
         | Most of those issues have been sorted out in recent versions.
         | It's all container-ready now with pretty solid k8s story.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | I just docker-compose up'd the server and configured it. I
         | don't know when you last needed to mess with it, but the
         | containerised version seems quite easy.
         | 
         | Configuration sucked, but that's because Keycloak can do an
         | awful lot.
        
         | ownagefool wrote:
         | Whilst I agree keycloak is a lil clunky, I had it working
         | clustered in k8s ~8 years ago.
         | 
         | I do recall the gossip protocol presenting problems back then,
         | but now I believe the helm chart just works.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-18 23:00 UTC)