SSO at the Edge with NGINX Plus: OIDC for Any Backend

NGINX Plus can provide enterprise OpenID Connect single sign-on at the gateway through its njs module and the official nginx-openid-connect reference implementation, allowing it to act as a confidential relying party that redirects users to an identity provider, exchanges authorization codes for tokens server-side, maintains sessions, and proxies authenticated requests without usually requiring backend changes. This approach requires a commercial NGINX Plus subscription and the nginx-plus-module-njs package; it is not supported by open-source NGINX. Setup involves registering an exact callback URI, including any nonstandard port, using the repository’s configure.sh script with issuer discovery metadata and securely managed client credentials, and configuring an upstream backend. The guide emphasizes TLS, correct proxy headers, testing logout behavior, dynamic signing-key retrieval for key rotation, and preserving identity headers across proxy layers. It also stresses that edge authentication does not secure a backend that remains directly accessible, recommending private binding or firewall restrictions and external verification of inaccessibility. Organizations using OSS NGINX are advised to implement authentication in the application, use Apache with mod_auth_openidc as an edge layer, or evaluate NGINX Plus rather than build a custom OIDC flow on a security-critical path.

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