How To Integrate Azure Active Directory SSO with Chainguard

The Chainguard platform supports Single sign-on (SSO) authentication for users. By default, users can log in with GitHub, GitLab and Google, but SSO support allows users to bring their own identity provider for authentication.

This guide outlines how to create an Azure Active Directory (AD) Application and integrate it with Chainguard. After completing this guide, you’ll be able to log in to Chainguard using Azure AD and will no longer be limited to the default SSO options.

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you will need the following.

• chainctl installed on your system. Follow our guide on How To Install chainctl if you don’t already have this installed.
• An Azure account you can use to set up an Active Directory Application.

Create an Azure Active Directory Application

To integrate the Azure AD identity provider with the Chainguard platform, log in to Azure and navigate to the Azure Active Directory console in the Azure portal.

There, select the App registrations tab and click New registration.

In the Register an application screen, configure the application as follows.

• Name: Set the username to “Chainguard” (or similar) to ensure users recognize this application is for authentication to the Chainguard platform.
• Supported account types: Select the Single tenant option so that only your organization can use this application to authenticate to Chainguard.
• Redirect URI: Set the platform to Web and the redirect URI to https://issuer.enforce.dev/oauth/callback.

Save your configuration by clicking the Register button.

Next, you can optionally set additional branding for the application by selecting the Branding and properties tab.

There, you can set additional metadata for the application, including a Chainguard logo icon here to help your users visually identify this integration. If you’d like, you can use the icon from the Chainguard Console. The console homepage is console.chainguard.dev, and our terms of service and private statements can be found at chainguard.dev/terms-of-service and chainguard.dev/privacy-notice, respectively.

Finally, navigate to the Certificates & secrets tab to create a client secret to authenticate the Chainguard platform to Azure Active Directory. Select New client secret to add a client secret. In the resulting modal window, add a description and set an expiration date.

Finally, take note of the client secret “Value” that is created. You’ll need this to configure the Chainguard platform to use this Azure Active Directory application.

Configuring Chainguard to use Azure Active Directory

Now that your Azure Active Directory application is ready, you can create the custom identity provider.

First, log in to Chainguard with chainctl, using an OIDC provider like Google, GitHub, or GitLab to bootstrap your account.

chainctl auth login

Note that this bootstrap account can be used as a backup account (that is, a backup account you can use to log in if you ever lose access to your primary account). However, if you prefer to remove this role-binding after configuring the custom IDP, you may also do so.

To configure Chainguard, make a note of the following details from your Azure Active Directory application:

• Application (client) Id: This can be found on the Overview tab of the Chainguard AD application.
• Client Secret: You noted this down when you set up the clientsecret in the previous step.
• Directory (tenant) Id: This can also be found on the Overview tab of the Chainguard AD application.

You will also need the UIDP for the Chainguard organization under which you want to install the identity provider. Your selection won’t affect how your users authenticate but will have implications on who has permission to modify the SSO configuration.

You can retrieve a list of all the Chainguard organizations you belong to — along with their UIDPs — with the following command.

chainctl iam organizations ls -o table

                         	ID                         	|  	  NAME    |	DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------+-------------+---------------------
  59156e77fb23e1e5ebcb1bd9c5edae471dd85c43              | sample_org  |
  . . .                                                 | . . .       |

Note down the ID value for your chosen organization.

With this information in hand, create a new identity provider with the following commands.

export NAME=azure-ad
export CLIENT_ID=<your application/client id here>
export CLIENT_SECRET=<your client secret here>
export ORG=<your organization UIDP here>
export TENANT_ID=<your directory/tenant id here>
export ISSUER="https://login.microsoftonline.com/${TENANT_ID}/v2.0"
chainctl iam identity-provider create \
  --configuration-type=OIDC \
  --oidc-client-id=${CLIENT_ID} \
  --oidc-client-secret=${CLIENT_SECRET} \
  --oidc-issuer=${ISSUER} \
  --oidc-additional-scopes=email \
  --oidc-additional-scopes=profile \
  --parent=${ORG} \
  --default-role=viewer \
  --name=${NAME}

Note the --default-role option. This defines the default role granted to users registering with this identity provider. This example specifies the viewer role, but depending on your needs you might choose editor or owner. If you don’t include this option, you’ll be prompted to specify the role interactively. For more information, refer to the IAM and Security section of our Introduction to Custom Identity Providers in Chainguard tutorial.

You can refer to our Generic Integration Guide in our Introduction to Custom Identity Providers doc for more information about the chainctl iam identity-provider create command and its required options.