Hanko backend

Hanko backend provides an HTTP API to build a modern login and registration experience for your users. Its core features are an API for passkeys (WebAuthn), passwords, and passcodes, as well as JWT management.

Hanko backend can be used on its own or in combination with hanko-elements, a powerful frontend library that contains polished and customizable UI flows for password-based and passwordless user authentication that can be easily integrated into any web app with as little as two lines of code.

Note The passcode.smtp.host configuration entry is required for the service to start up. Only a check for a non-empty string value will be performed. Also: SMTP-connection related values are not verified, i.e. the application may start but no emails will be sent and your users might not be able to log in if the provided values do not describe an existing SMTP server.

Configure JSON Web Key Set generation

The API uses JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) for authentication. JWTs are verified using JSON Web Keys (JWK). JWKs are created internally by setting secrets.keys options in the configuration file (backend/config/config.yaml or your own *.yaml file):

secrets:
  keys:
    - <CHANGE-ME>

Note at least one secrets.keys entry must be provided and each entry must be a random generated string at least 16 characters long.

Keys secrets are used to en- and decrypt the JWKs which get used to sign the JWTs. For every key a JWK is generated, encrypted with the key and persisted in the database.

The Hanko backend API publishes public cryptographic keys as a JWK set through the .well-known/jwks.json endpoint to enable clients to verify token signatures.

Configure WebAuthn

Passkeys are based on the Web Authentication API. In order to create and login with passkeys, the Hanko backend must be provided information about the WebAuthn Relying Party.

For most use cases, you just need the domain of your web application that uses the Hanko backend. Set webauthn.relying_party.id to the domain and set webauthn.relying_party.origin to the domain including the protocol.

Important: If you are hosting your web application on a non-standard HTTP port (i.e. 80) you also have to include this in the origin setting.

Local development example

When developing locally, the Hanko backend defaults to:

webauthn:
  relying_party:
    id: "localhost"
    display_name: "Hanko Authentication Service"
    origins:
      - "http://localhost"

so no further configuration changes need to be made to your configuration file.

Production Examples

When you have a website hosted at example.com and you want to add a login to it that will be available at https://example.com/login, the WebAuthn config would look like this:

webauthn:
  relying_party:
    id: "example.com"
    display_name: "Example Project"
    origins:
      - "https://example.com"

If the login should be available at https://login.example.com instead, then the WebAuthn config would look like this:

webauthn:
  relying_party:
    id: "login.example.com"
    display_name: "Example Project"
    origins:
      - "https://login.example.com"

Given the above scenario, you still may want to bind your users WebAuthn credentials to example.com if you plan to add other services on other subdomains later that should be able to use existing credentials. Another reason can be if you want to have the option to move your login from https://login.example.com to https://example.com/login at some point. Then the WebAuthn config would look like this:

webauthn:
  relying_party:
    id: "example.com"
    display_name: "Example Project"
    origins:
      - "https://login.example.com"

Configure CORS

Because the backend and your application(s) consuming backend API most likely have different origins, i.e. scheme (protocol), hostname (domain), and port part of the URL are different, you need to configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) and specify your application(s) as allowed origins:

server:
  public:
    cors:
      allow_origins:
        - https://example.com

When you include a wildcard * origin you need to set unsafe_wildcard_origin_allowed: true:

server:
  public:
    cors:
      allow_origins:
        - "*"
      unsafe_wildcard_origin_allowed: true

Wildcard * origins can lead to cross-site attacks and when you include a * wildcard origin, we want to make sure, that you understand what you are doing, hence this flag.

Note In most cases, the allow_origins list here should contain the same entries as the webauthn.relying_party.origins list. Only when you have an Android app you will have an extra entry (android:apk-key-hash:...) in the webauthn.relying_party.origins list.

Start the backend

The Hanko backend consists of a public and an administrative API (currently providing user management endpoints). These can be started separately or in a single command.

Start the public API

Docker

docker run --mount type=bind,source=<PATH-TO-CONFIG-FILE>,target=/config/config.yaml -p 8000:8000 -it ghcr.io/teamhanko/hanko:latest serve public

Using pre-built binaries

Each GitHub release (> 0.9.0) has hanko's binary assets uploaded to it. Alternatively you can use a tool like eget to install binaries from releases on GitHub:

eget teamhanko/hanko

From source

go generate ./...
go build -a -o hanko main.go

Then run:

./hanko serve public --config <PATH-TO-CONFIG-FILE>

Note The <PATH-TO-CONFIG-FILE> must be an absolute path to your config file created above.

8000 is the default port for the public API. It can be customized in the configuration through the server.public.address option.

The service is now available at localhost:8000.

Start the admin API

In the usage section above we only started the public API. Use the command below to start the admin API. The default port is 8001, but can be customized in the configuration through the server.admin.address option.

serve admin

Warning The admin API must be protected by an access management system.

Start both public and admin API

Use this command to start the public and admin API together:

serve all

Running tests

You can run the unit tests by running the following command within the backend directory:

go test -v ./...

Additional topics

Enabling password authentication

Password-based authentication is disabled per default. You can activate it and set the minimum password length in your configuration file:

password:
  enabled: true
  min_password_length: 8

Cross-domain communication

JWTs used for authentication are propagated via cookie. If your application and the Hanko backend run on different domains, cookies cannot be set by the Hanko backend. In that case the backend must be configured to transmit the JWT via Header (X-Auth-Token). To do so, enable propagation of the X-Auth-Token header:

session:
  enable_auth_token_header: true

Audit logs

API operations are recorded in an audit log. By default, the audit log is enabled and logs to STDOUT:

audit_log:
  console_output:
    enabled: true
    output: "stdout"
  storage:
    enabled: false

To persist audit logs in the database, set audit_log.storage.enabled to true.

Rate Limiting

Hanko implements basic fixed-window rate limiting for the passcode/init and password/login endpoints to mitigate brute-force attacks. It uses a combination of user-id/IP to mitigate DoS attacks on user accounts. You can choose between an in-memory and a redis store.

In production systems, you may want to hide the Hanko service behind a proxy or gateway (e.g. Kong, Traefik) to provide additional network-based rate limiting.

Social Logins

Hanko supports OAuth-based (authorization code flow) third party provider logins. Please view the official docs for a list of supported providers and guides.

User import

You can import an existing user pool into Hanko using json in the following format:

[
  {
    "user_id": "799e95f0-4cc7-4bd7-9f01-5fdc4fa26ea3",
    "emails": [
      {
        "address": "koreyrath@wolff.name",
        "is_primary": true,
        "is_verified": true
      }
    ],
    "created_at": "2023-06-07T13:42:49.369489Z",
    "updated_at": "2023-06-07T13:42:49.369489Z"
  },
  {
    "user_id": "",
    "emails": [
      {
        "address": "joshuagrimes@langworth.name",
        "is_primary": true,
        "is_verified": true
      }
    ],
    "created_at": "2023-06-07T13:42:49.369494Z",
    "updated_at": "2023-06-07T13:42:49.369494Z"
  }
]

There is a json schema file located here that you can use for validation and input suggestions. To import users run:

hanko user import -i ./path/to/import_file.json

API specification

Hanko Public API
Hanko Admin API

Configuration reference

License

The Hanko backend ist licensed under the AGPL-3.0.

Files

README.md

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README.md

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Hanko backend

Contents

API features

Upcoming features

Running the backend

Run a database

Postgres

MySQL

Configure database access

Apply Database migrations

Docker

From source

Run and configure an SMTP server

Configure JSON Web Key Set generation

Configure WebAuthn

Local development example

Production Examples

Configure CORS

Start the backend

Start the public API

Docker

Using pre-built binaries

From source

Start the admin API

Start both public and admin API

Running tests

Additional topics

Enabling password authentication

Cross-domain communication

Audit logs

Rate Limiting

Social Logins

User import

API specification

Configuration reference

License