Black Box App Needs Basic Authentication

README.md

Black Box App Needs Basic Authentication

Situation

We have a black box app (written in who-knows-what-language). This is usually a situation when we have an app running in a docker container. We need to enable very basic user/password authentication (to secure the site's content and to reduce chance of DDOS).

Action

Note: it is better to install and use WSGI parallel servers such as gunicorn but sometimes, for a docker app, that boat has already sailed.

We are referring to:

• How to serve flask via gunicorn + nginx
• How to install nginx
• Basic Authentication in nginx

1. Install nginx and apache2-utils

sudo apt-get install nginx apache2-utils

2. Check nginx is working

sudo systemctl status nginx
curl http://127.0.0.1:80

3. Create the password file

sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/.htpasswd user1
sudo htpasswd /etc/apache2/.htpasswd user2
# repeat for all users

4. Create a new nginx file

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name your_domain www.your_domain;

  location / {
    include proxy_params;
    proxy_pass http://localhost:<port>;
      
    auth_basic           "Administrator’s Area";
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/.htpasswd; 
  }
}

You may omit the server_name line if you want to accept any (*)

Also note that the double quotes in values (for example Administrator's Area) must be straight (not curly one).

5. Soft-link that file and delete the default profile

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

6. Restart nginx and check if the app is served via nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Results

The application now has rudimentary http authentication.