caddy-radius

caddy-radius is a Caddy plugin that implements HTTP Basic Access Authentication using a RADIUS server for user authentications.

When a user requests a resource that is protected, the browser will prompt for a username and password if they have not already supplied one. The user credentials are sent to a configured RADIUS server for authentication. Upon successful RADIUS authentication (Access-Accept), the server will grant access to the resource.

NOTE: RADIUS has relatively weak security. Communication between the Caddy server and the RADIUS server should be on trusted networks or separately secured via IPsec or other mechanisms which are outside the scope of this plugin.

After a successful RADIUS authentication, credentials are stored in a local cache with a cache TTL in seconds as configured in caddyfile (cachetimeout). Subsequent HTTP requests will use the cached entry, reducing load on the RADIUS servers as well as response time to HTTP requests.

When cached entries are older than cachetimeout a new RADIUS authentication will be performed.

If Authorization headers DO NOT match the cached entry for a particular user, a fresh RADIUS authentication will be performed.

Authentication flow diagram

                                    +-------------+                                 
                                    |HTTP 401     |--------------------------+      
                                    |Unauthorized |                          |      
                                    +-------------+                          |      
                                                                      Reject |      
                                                                             |      
+------------+      +---------------+          +------------+        +--------+
|HTTP request|------| secured path? |---------+|   cached?  |--------| RADIUS |
+------------+      +-------|-------+ yes      +------------+ no     +--------+
                            |                         |                      |      
                            |                         |                      |      
                            |no                    yes|               Accept |      
                            |                         |                      |      
                            |                         |                      |      
                      +-----|------+                  |                      |      
                      |  Grant     |------------------+                      |      
                      |  Access    |-----------------------------------------+
                      +------------+

RADIUS servers

caddy-radius has been tested against CiscoSecure ACS 5.4 and FreeRADIUS 3.0.13

Caddyfile

Add a radiusauth term to your caddyfile

radiusauth {
        server 192.0.2.10:1812 192.0.2.90:1812
        secret SuperAWesomeSecret
        realm  "RADIUS Auth"
        except /public /assets /images
        cache  /var/cache
        cachetimeout 300
}

• server - RADIUS server(s) in host:port format
• secret - RADIUS shared secret
• realm - Basic Auth realm message (ex: ACME Inc.)
• except - path(s) to NOT enable authentication on
• only - path(s) to ONLY enable authenticaiton on
• cache - location to store cache file
• cachetimeout - time in seconds authentication entries should be cached
• nasid - manually set the RADIUS NAS-ID (default is os hostname)

Filtering: You can only have except OR only but not both! Whitelist your 'exceptions' OR blacklist your 'only' paths to filter

TODO:

• Implement RADIUS server failover
• allow disabling of cache
• Windows testing
• finish path filtering (needs more testing)
• every HTTP GET is a RADIUS transaction, need to reduce
  • implement some kind of cache
    • bcrypt hash of user/password that expires at X minutes

Inspired by

caddy-radius draws on ideas from mod_auth_xradius for Apache which inspired it's creation

DISCLAIMER

This software is provided as is for free and public use. No warranties or claims of quality or security are made. Users should perform their own security analysis and acknowledge and accept the risks as stated.