What is cronuseo ?

Cronuseo is an open-source authorization solution that allows developers to easily integrate permissions and access control into their products within minutes.

Example: A developer can call the cronuseo and get a clear answer if User A has the permissions to create Resource B.

By using Cronuseo, it is possible to create a separate authorization service, effectively separating our policies from our code. Controlling access management centrally via a separate authorization service enables you to provide this service to any system that needs to check whether a user can or cannot access its resources. Cronuseo is based on modern, open-source foundation which includes Open Policy Agent (OPA), Zanzibar.

Main features:

• Role-based Access Control (RBAC)
• Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) with policy tunnel

Get started

Note : Cronuseo is still in the experimental stage. Recently, on May 25, 2023, it was tested on Choreo, the cloud native application development platform provided by WSO2. Let's goo!

You can use Docker to run cronuseo locally

Set up the local environment

• curl -LJO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shashimalcse/cronuseo/HEAD/docker-compose-db.yml | curl -LJO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shashimalcse/cronuseo/HEAD/docker-compose.yml
• Prepare a mongodb instance docker compose -f docker-compose-database.yml up
• Make sure to update the necessary configuration in the config/local.yml file, and don't forget to replace the jwks endpoint with the ones provided by your own identity provider and admin user identifier which is sub claim value of the jwt token (user ID). (only tested with asgardeo and Auth0)
• Start management server and check server (Policy Decision Point) docker compose up --build

How to implement RBAC using cronuseo

In order to use RBAC, we need two types of information:

• Which users/groups have which roles
• Which roles have which permissions

Once we provide RBAC with this information, we decide how to make an authorization decision; A user/group is assigned to a role and is authorized to do what the role permits.

For example, let us look at the following role assignments:

User/Group (Who is performing the action)	Role (What is the user’s/group's assigned role)
John	Director
Bob	Coordinator
Finance Department	Accountant

Use user and group endpoints to create users and groups

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_id>/users' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Token> \
--data-raw '{
  "username": "<Username>"
  "identidier": "<Identifier>"
}'

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_id>/groups' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Token> \
--data-raw '{
  "display_name": "<Display Name>",
  "identifier": "<Identifier>",
  "users": [
    "<user_id>"
  ]
}'

Use role endpoint to assign roles to users/groups

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_id>/roles' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Token> \
--data-raw '{
  "display_name": "<Display Name>",
  "identifier": "<Identifier>",
  "groups": [
    "<group_id>"
  ],
  "users": [
    "<user_id>"
  ]
}'

And this role/permission assignment:

Role	Action (What are they doing)	Resource (What are they performing the action on)
Director	Write	Budget
Coordinator	Read	Budget
Accountant	Want	Budget

Use resource POST request to create a resource with actions

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_id>/resources' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Token> \
--data-raw '{
  "actions": [
    {
      "display_name": "<Display Name>",
      "identifier": "<Identifier>",
    }
  ],
  "display_name": "<Display Name>",
  "identifier": "<Identifier>",
}'

Use role permission PATCH request to assign permission to role

curl --location --request PATCH 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_id>/roles/<role_id>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: <Token> \
--data-raw '{
  "added_permissions": [
    {
      "action": "<Action Identifier>",
      "resource": "<Resource Identifier>"
    }
  ]
}'

In this example, RBAC will make the following authorization decisions:

User/Group	Action	Resource	Decision (Should the action be allowed, and why?)
John	Write	Budget	Allow because John is in Director
Bob	Read	Budget	Allow because Bob is in Coordinator
Bob	Write	Budget	Deny because Bob is in Coordinator
Finance Department	Write	Budget	Deny because Finance Department is in Accountant

Use permission check endpoint or SDKs to get authorization decisions

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/api/v1/o/<org_identifier>/check' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'API_KEY: <API_KEY>' \
--data-raw '{
  "action": "<Action Identifier>",
  "resource": "<Resource Identifier>",
  "identifier": "<User Identifier>"
}'

Response will be true or false

cronuseo SDKs for applications

use these sdks to check permissions for the user.

• python - https://pypi.org/project/cronuseosdk
• nodejs - https://www.npmjs.com/package/cronuseosdk
• golang - https://github.com/shashimalcse/cronuseogosdk

Contributing

Bugfixes are the best and always welcome! Improving test coverage is great, with reliable non brittle tests. Features are welcome. We have a contributing guideline available.