Lockbox

Lockbox is a forward proxy for making third party API calls.

Why?

Automation or workflow platforms like Zapier and IFTTT allow "webhook" actions for interacting with third party APIs.

• IFTTT webhooks
• Zapier webhooks

They require you to provide your third party API keys so they can act on your behalf. You are trusting them to keep your API keys safe, and that they do not misuse them.

May be you don't want that.

How Lockbox helps

You run your own Lockbox server.

When a workflow platform needs to make a third party API call on your behalf, it makes a Lockbox API call instead. Lockbox makes the call to the third party API, and returns the result to the workflow platform.

Live demo

Proxy requests to Github API.

# Direct call to GitHub's API (public).
curl https://api.github.com/orgs/google/repos

# Call to GitHub API via Lockbox (public, uncredential'd, both legs)
curl https://lockbox-proxy-demo.fly.dev/s/github_public/orgs/google/repos

# Call to GitHub API (auth'd by Github API token) via Lockbox (auth'd by service token)
export SERVICE_TOKEN=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJsb2NrYm94IiwiZXhwIjoyNzA3Nzg4NjAyLCJzZXJ2aWNlX25hbWUiOiJnaXRodWJfcHJpdmF0ZV9iZWhpbmRfc2VydmljZV90b2tlbiIsImF1ZCI6ImxvY2tib3gtcHJveHktZGVtbyJ9.t3XNqQg-XkFeyziSb8xvVlCd7-TNac9hNScWuNX7dRo
curl https://lockbox-proxy-demo.fly.dev/s/github_private_behind_service_token/orgs/google/repos -v -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICE_TOKEN"
# - Curious about SERVICE_TOKEN?  Copy into https://jwt.io/ to decode it.
# - Underlying Github API token is used by Lockbox, but not exposed to the client (curl).

Main benefits

• Third party API keys are never exposed to the workflow platform
• You can audit all API calls made on your behalf
• [Planned] You can restrict access to external APIs in a more fine grained manner
• [Planned] Rate limit third party API calls

Drawbacks

• You need to run an instance of Lockbox on your own infrastructure. You own its performance, security and reliability.
• Centralization of YOUR API credentials (with your Lockbox instance). However, consider this a different kind of centralization. I.e. Workflow automation platforms centralize credentials for a large number of users in a single system too, possibly presenting a valuable aggregate target for attackers.

How to run Lockbox

Installation

pip install lockbox-proxy

Prepare a services config file

May be call it sample_config.json. Example:

{
  "services": {
    // Access GitHub APIs that do not require auth
    "github_public": {
      "base_url": "api.github.com",
      "requires_service_token": false
    },
    // Access GitHub APIs that do not require auth - except Lockbox requires auth (by "service token')
    "github_public_behind_service_token": {
      "base_url": "api.github.com",
      "requires_service_token": true
    }
  }
}

For reference, refer to lockbox/config.py.

Choose a Lockbox secret key

This secret key is used to generate signed service tokens. Service tokens are used to authenticate API calls to Lockbox.

echo "YOUR_SUPER_SECRET_VALUE" > signing_key.txt

Run Lockbox server

This snippet runs Lockbox server on localhost:8000.

# set config env vars
export LOCKBOX_SIGNING_KEY_FILE=signing_key.txt
export LOCKBOX_CONFIG_PATH=sample_config.json

# start the server
gunicorn lockbox.app:app --preload

Accessing third-party APIs via Lockbox

Example: Call to GitHub API to list an organization's public repos.

Without Lockbox, the request would have been GET https://api.github.com/orgs/google/repos for Google's repos.

Configure api.github.com in service config file.

See example above.

Generate a Lockbox service token

Each Lockbox service token allows access to a single service (e.g. github_public_behind_service_token).

This command generates a Lockbox service token that authorizes the bearer to access GitHub API through Lockbox.

The service token is saved to the SERVICE_TOKEN environment variable.

export SERVICE_TOKEN=$(python lockbox/generate_service_token.py \
    --service-name github_public_behind_service_token \
    --signing-key-file signing_key.txt \
    --audience walkthrough
    )

Note: audience identifies the intended recipient of the service token.

Make the Lockbox API call

# Lockbox URL structure: /s/{service_name}/{path}
curl localhost:8000/s/github_with_auth/orgs/google/repos -v -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICE_TOKEN"

How to revoke service tokens

Revocation is done through checking the audience claim of the service token.

In the service config file (e.g. sample_config.json), each service may specify a list of audiences that are valid:

{
  "services": {
    // Access GitHub APIs that DO require auth - and Lockbox requires auth (by "service token") to protect access to that.
    // Additionally, only service tokens with audience "zapier_webhook" will be accepted by Lockbox.
    "github_private_behind_service_token": {
      // ...
      // ...
      "requires_service_token": true,
      "valid_audiences": [
        "walkthrough"
      ]
    },
  }
}

• If valid_audiences is unset, or set to null, it means all audiences are valid.
• If valid_audiences is set to a list, then only audiences in the list are valid.

In the example above, only service tokens with audience walkthrough is valid for the service github_private_behind_service_token.

To revoke ALL service tokens for a service, set valid_audiences to [].

Note sample_config.json updates are not automatically reloaded. You need to restart Lockbox server for changes to take.

Auditing

Auditing can be enabled by setting audit_log in the config file.

{
  "services": {
    // ...
  },
  "audit_log": {
    "type": "local_dir",
    // Lockbox will try to create this directory if it does not exist
    "root_dir": "/var/tmp/lockbox_audit_log"
  }
}

Events are logged in JSON format to the file path: <root_dir>/service_name/YYYY-MM-DD/HH-MM-SS-<uuid>.json.

<uuid> ensures filename uniqueness for events logged within the same second.

Design philosophy

This is very much a prototype implementation to explore the concept of abstracting out third party API calls. E.g. Is it even a common need?

Therefore, the main priorities are:

• Correctness
• Simplicity (in configuration, usage)
• Security (avoid blatant shortcomings)
• Minimize to essential features only (which may evolve with feedback!)

We will consider other factors later, such as:

• Performance (e.g. may be not Python?)
• Flexibility
• Deployment scripts / walkthroughs

Alternatives / Prior art

• Nginx - battle testing web server, which can be configured to behave like Lockbox. Especially with various scripting options. E.g.
  • OpenResty / Nginx with Lua
  • Njs scripting