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Routes​

A Route defines how to access a service running behind Pomerium. This includes authentication (both for Pomerium and passed through to the service), rewrites, header management, load balancing, etc.

When first installing Pomerium Enterprise, users may want to import existing routes from the open-source Pomerium core. The Import Routes button accepts the open-source config.yaml file and imports routes from it to Pomerium Enterprise.

From the main Routes page you can view and manage existing routes. From the table of routes you can:

  • filter visible routes,
  • delete one or more routes,
  • move routes between Namespaces,
  • export one or more route definitions to a CSV file,
  • create a JSON-formatted policy report on one or more selected routes.

The sections below cover the options available when creating or editing a route.

General​

The General tab defines the route path, both from the internet and to the internal service, and the policies attached. Note that policies enforced on a Namespace the route resides in will also be applied.

Name​

This value is only visible in the Console UI.

From​

From is the externally accessible URL for the proxied request.

Specifying tcp+https for the scheme enables TCP proxying support for the route. You may map more than one port through the same hostname by specifying a different :port in the URL.

warning

Only secure schemes (https and tcp+https) are supported.

Metrics Name​

Once a Route is created, the Metric Name field will populate. You can use this name to scrape the Prometheus service for metrics on this Route when making custom dashboards.

To​

To is the destination(s) of a proxied request. It can be an internal resource, or an external resource. Multiple upstream resources can be targeted by using a list instead of a single URL:

- from: https://example.com
  to:
  - https://a.example.com
  - https://b.example.com

A load balancing weight may be associated with a particular upstream by appending ,[weight] to the URL. The exact behavior depends on your lb_policy setting. See Load Balancing for example configurations.

Must be tcp if from is tcp+https.

warning

Be careful with trailing slash.

With rule:

- from: https://verify.corp.example.com
  to: https://verify.pomerium.com/anything

Requests to https://verify.corp.example.com will be forwarded to https://verify.pomerium.com/anything, while requests to https://verify.corp.example.com/foo will be forwarded to https://verify.pomerium.com/anythingfoo.To make the request forwarded to https://httbin.org/anything/foo, you can use double slashes in your request https://httbin.corp.example.com//foo.

While the rule:

- from: https://verify.corp.example.com
  to: https://verify.pomerium.com/anything/

All requests to https://verify.corp.example.com/* will be forwarded to https://verify.pomerium.com/anything/*. That means accessing to https://verify.corp.example.com will be forwarded to https://verify.pomerium.com/anything/. That said, if your application does not handle trailing slash, the request will end up with 404 not found.

Either redirect or to must be set.

Redirect​

Redirect is used to redirect incoming requests to a new URL. The redirect field is an object with several possible options:

  • https_redirect (boolean): the incoming scheme will be swapped with "https".
  • scheme_redirect (string): the incoming scheme will be swapped with the given value.
  • host_redirect (string): the incoming host will be swapped with the given value.
  • port_redirect (integer): the incoming port will be swapped with the given value.
  • path_redirect (string): the incoming path portion of the URL will be swapped with the given value.
  • prefix_rewrite (string): the incoming matched prefix will be swapped with the given value.
  • response_code (integer): the response code to use for the redirect. Defaults to 301.
  • strip_query (boolean): indicates that during redirection, the query portion of the URL will be removed. Defaults to false.

Either redirect or to must be set.

Pass Identity Headers​

When enabled, this option will pass identity headers to upstream applications. These headers include:

  • X-Pomerium-Jwt-Assertion
  • X-Pomerium-Claim-*

Policies​

Add or remove Policies to be applied to the Route. Note that Policies enforced in the Route's Namespace will be applied automatically.

Enable Google Cloud Serverless Authentication​

Enable sending a signed Authorization Header to upstream GCP services.

Requires setting Google Cloud Serverless Authentication Service Account or running Pomerium in an environment with a GCP service account present in default locations.

Matchers​

Path​

If set, the route will only match incoming requests with a path that is an exact match for the specified path.

Regex​

If set, the route will only match incoming requests with a path that matches the specified regular expression. The supported syntax is the same as the Go regexp package which is based on re2.

Regex Rewrite Pattern​

The pattern to match before rewriting, ex: ^/service/([^/]+)(/.*)$.

Regex Rewrite Substitution​

The substitution for your regex pattern, ex: \\2/instance/\\1.

Prefix​

If set, the route will only match incoming requests with a path that begins with the specified prefix.

Prefix Rewrite​

If set, indicates that during forwarding, the matched prefix (or path) should be swapped with this value. For example, given this policy:

from: https://from.example.com
to: https://to.example.com
prefix: /admin
prefix_rewrite: /

A request to https://from.example.com/admin would be forwarded to https://to.example.com/.

Timeouts​

Allow Websockets​

If set, enables proxying of websocket connections.

warning

Use with caution: websockets are long-lived connections, so global timeouts are not enforced (though the policy-specific timeout is enforced). Allowing websocket connections to the proxy could result in abuse via DOS attacks.

Allow SPDY​

If set, enables proxying of SPDY protocol upgrades.

Timeout​

Policy timeout establishes the per-route timeout value. Cannot exceed global timeout values.

Idle Timeout​

If you are proxying long-lived requests that employ streaming calls such as websockets or gRPC, set this to either a maximum value there may be no data exchange over a connection (recommended), or set it to unlimited (0s). If idle_timeout is specified, and timeout is not explicitly set, then timeout would be unlimited (0s). You still may specify maximum lifetime of the connection using timeout value (i.e. to 1 day).

Headers​

Host Headers​

The host header can be preserved via the preserve_host_header setting or customized via three mutually exclusive options:

  1. preserve_host_header will, when enabled, this option will pass the host header from the incoming request to the proxied host, instead of the destination hostname. It's an optional parameter of type bool that defaults to false.

    See ProxyPreserveHost.

  2. host_rewrite, which will rewrite the host to a new literal value.

  3. host_rewrite_header, which will rewrite the host to match an incoming header value.

  4. host_path_regex_rewrite_pattern & host_path_regex_rewrite_substitution, which will rewrite the host according to a regex matching the path. For example with the following config:

    host_path_regex_rewrite_pattern: "^/(.+)/.+$"
    host_path_regex_rewrite_substitution: \1

    Would rewrite the host header to example.com given the path /example.com/some/path.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th options correspond to the Envoy route action host related options, which can be found here.

Set Request Headers​

Set Request Headers allows you to set static values for given request headers. This can be useful if you want to pass along additional information to downstream applications as headers, or set authentication header to the request. For example:

- from: https://verify.corp.example.com
  to: https://verify.pomerium.com
  policy:
    - allow:
        or:
          - email:
              is: user@example.com
  set_request_headers:
    # works auto-magically!
    # https://verify.corp.example.com/basic-auth/root/hunter42
    Authorization: Basic cm9vdDpodW50ZXI0Mg==
    X-Your-favorite-authenticating-Proxy: "Pomerium"
warning

Neither :-prefixed pseudo-headers nor the Host: header may be modified via this mechanism. Those headers may instead be modified via mechanisms such as prefix_rewrite, regex_rewrite, and host_rewrite.

Remove Request Headers​

Remove Request Headers allows you to remove given request headers. This can be useful if you want to prevent privacy information from being passed to downstream applications. For example:

- from: https://verify.corp.example.com
  to: https://verify.pomerium.com
  policy:
    - allow:
        or:
          - email:
              is: user@example.com
  remove_request_headers:
    - X-Email
    - X-Username

Rewrite Response Headers​

Rewrite Response Headers allows you to modify response headers before they are returned to the client. The header field will match the HTTP header name, and prefix will be replaced with value. For example, if the downstream server returns a header:

Location: http://localhost:8000/two/some/path/

And the policy has this config:

rewrite_response_headers:
  - header: Location
    prefix: http://localhost:8000/two/
    value: http://frontend/one/

The browser would be redirected to: http://frontend/one/some/path/. This is similar to nginx's proxy_redirect option, but can be used for any header.

Load Balancer​

Load Balancing Policy​

In presence of multiple upstreams, defines load balancing strategy between them.

See Envoy documentation for more details.

Some policy types support additional configuration.

Policies​

A Policy defines what permissions a set of users or groups has. Policies are applied to Namespaces or Routes to associate the set of permissions with a service or set of service, completing the authentication model.

Policies can be constructed three ways:

Web UI​

From the BUILDER tab, users can add allow or deny blocks to a policy, containing and/or/not/nor logic to allow or deny sets of users and groups.

A policy being constructed in Pomerium Enterprise allowing a single user access

Pomerium Policy Language​

From the EDITOR tab users can write policies in Pomerium Policy Language (PPL), a YAML-based notation.

A policy as viewed from the editor tab

PPL documents contain one or more rules. Each rule has a corresponding action and one or more logical operators. Each logical operator contains criteria and each criterion has a name and corresponding data.

PPL documents are defined via YAML:

- allow:
    or:
      - email:
          is: x@example.com
      - email:
          is: y@example.com

The available rule actions are:

  • allow
  • deny

The available logical operators are:

  • and
  • or
  • not
  • nor

The available criteria types are:

  • accept
  • authenticated_user
  • claim
  • date
  • day_of_week
  • domain
  • email
  • groups
  • http_method
  • http_path
  • record
  • reject
  • time_of_day
  • user

Some criteria also support a sub-path as part of the criterion name:

- allow:
    or:
      - claim/family_name: Smith

See Pomerium Policy Language for more details.

Rego​

For those using OPA, the REGO tab will accept policies written in Rego.

tip

A policy can only support PPL or Rego. Once one is set, the other tab is disabled.

Example Rego Policy

This example policy compares the given_name claim from a user's session against a list of popular first names, and only allows the 100 most popular first names.

package pomerium.policy
session = s {
  s = gset_databroker_record("type.googleapis.com/user.ServiceAccount", input.session.id)
  s != null
} else = s {
  s = get_databroker_record("type.googleapis.com/session.Session", input.session.id)
  s != null
} else = {} {
  true
}
user = u {
  u = get_databroker_record("type.googleapis.com/user.User", session.user_id)
} else = {} {
  true
}
allow = [true, {"custom-rego-authorized"}] {
  # grab all the claims from the user and session objects
  session_claims := object.get(session, "claims", {})
  user_claims := object.get(user, "claims", {})
  all_claims := object.union(session_claims, user_claims)
  # get the given_name claim. claim values are always an array of strings
  given_names := object.get(all_claims, "given_name", [])
  # query a JSON dump of the most popular baby names from 2020
  response := http.send({
    "method": "GET",
    "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aruljohn/popular-baby-names/master/2020/boy_names_2020.json",
    "force_json_decode": true,
  })
  # only include the top 100 names
  all_names := response.body.names
  popular_names := array.slice(all_names, 0, 99)
  # check that there's a given name in the popular names
  some i
  some j
  popular_names[i] == given_names[j]
} else = [false, {"custom-rego-unauthorized"}] {
  session.id != ""
} else = [false, {"user-unauthenticated"}] {
  true
}

This example pulls session data from the Databroker service using type.googleapis.com/session.Session for users and type.googleapis.com/user.ServiceAccount for service accounts.

Overrides​

  • Any Authenticated User: This setting will allow access to a route with this policy attached to any user who can authenticate to your Identity Provider (IdP).
  • CORS Preflight: Allow unauthenticated HTTP OPTIONS requests as per the CORS spec.
  • Public Access: This setting allows complete, unrestricted access to an associated route. Use this setting with caution.

Certificates​

Certificates are the x509 public-key and private-key used to establish secure HTTP and gRPC connections. Any combination of the above can be used together, and are additive. You can also use any of these settings in conjunction with Autocert to get OCSP stapling.

Certificates loaded into Pomerium from these config values are used to attempt secure connections between end users and services, between Pomerium services, and to upstream endpoints.

For example, if specifying multiple certificates at once:

certificates:
  - cert: "$HOME/.acme.sh/authenticate.example.com_ecc/fullchain.cer"
    key: "$HOME/.acme.sh/authenticate.example.com_ecc/authenticate.example.com.key"
  - cert: "$HOME/.acme.sh/verify.example.com_ecc/fullchain.cer"
    key: "$HOME/.acme.sh/verify.example.com_ecc/verify.example.com.key"
  - cert: "$HOME/.acme.sh/prometheus.example.com_ecc/fullchain.cer"
    key: "$HOME/.acme.sh/prometheus.example.com_ecc/prometheus.example.com.key"

Or to set a single certificate and key covering multiple domains and/or a wildcard subdomain:

certificate_file: "$HOME/.acme.sh/*.example.com/fullchain.crt"
certificate_key:  "$HOME/.acme.sh/*.example.com/*.example.com.key"

Note: Pomerium will check your system's trust/key store for valid certificates first. If your certificate solution imports into the system store, you don't need to also specify them with these configuration keys.

Devices​

Introduced in v0.16.0, the Manage Devices page lets administrators manage user devices for policy-based authorization.

Manage Devices​

From this page, administrators can manage new and existing device enrollments.

Device enrollment let's you create policies that use device identity.

  • Users can self-enroll devices, which must then be approved in the Devices List for policies requiring approved devices.
  • Administrators can use the New Enrollment button to create a link for the user to enroll a device as pre-approved. See our Pre-Approved Device Enrollment guide for more information.

Devices List​

Displays the currently enrolled devices for each user, along with their current approval status. Administrators can inspect, approve, or delete registered devices from this table.

List of user devices

New Enrollment​

The New Enrollment button allows administrators to create a custom link for a specific user to use to register a new device, which will automatically be approved. This scheme is known as Trust on First Use (TOFU).

Example device enrollment

Search Users​

New Enrollment URLs are only valid for the specified user.

Redirect URL​

Optional: The URL the user will be taken to after device enrollment is successful.

Enrollment Type​

Specify if the user can enroll any device identity, or restrict it to a secure enclave.