Dex is an OpenID Connect server that connects to other identity providers. Clients use a standards-based OAuth2 flow to login users, while the actual authentication is performed by established user management systems such as Google, GitHub, FreeIPA, etc.
OpenID Connect is a flavor of OAuth that builds on top of OAuth2 using the JOSE standards. This allows dex to provide:
- Short-lived, signed tokens with standard fields (such as email) issued on behalf of users.
- "well-known" discovery of OAuth2 endpoints.
- OAuth2 mechanisms such as refresh tokens and revocation for long term access.
- Automatic signing key rotation.
Standards-based token responses allows applications to interact with any OpenID Connect server instead of writing backend specific "access_token" dances. Systems that can already consume ID Tokens issued by dex include:
Dex's main production use is as an auth-N addon in CoreOS's enterprise Kubernetes solution, Tectonic. Dex runs natively on top of any Kubernetes cluster using Third Party Resources and can drive API server authentication through the OpenID Connect plugin. Clients, such as the Tectonic Console and kubectl, can act on behalf users who can login to the cluster through any identity provider dex supports.
More docs for running dex as a Kubernetes authenticator can be found here.
- Getting started
- What's new in v2
- Storage options
- Intro to OpenID Connect
- gRPC API
- Using Kubernetes with dex
- Identity provider logins
- Client libraries
- For bugs and feature requests (including documentation!), file an issue.
- For general discussion about both using and developing dex, join the dex-dev mailing list.
- For more details on dex development plans, check out the GitHub milestones.