dex

dex is a federated identity management service. It provides OpenID Connect (OIDC) to users, and can proxy to multiple remote identity providers (IdP) to drive actual authentication, as well as managing local username/password credentials.

We named the project 'dex' beceause it is a central index of users that other pieces of software can authenticate against.

Architecture

dex consists of multiple components:

dex-worker is the primary server component of dex
- host a user-facing API that drives the OIDC protocol
- proxy to remote identity providers via "connectors"
- provides an API for administrators to manage users.
dex-overlord is an auxiliary process responsible for two things:
- rotation of keys used by the workers to sign identity tokens
- garbage collection of stale data in the database
- provides an API for bootstrapping the system.
dexctl is CLI tool used to manage an dex deployment
- configure identity provider connectors
- administer OIDC client identities
database; a database is used to for persistent storage for keys, users, OAuth sessions and other data. Currently Postgres is the only supported database.

A typical dex deployment consists of N dex-workers behind a load balanacer, and one dex-overlord. The dex-workers directly handle user requests, so the loss of all workers can result in service downtime. The single dex-overlord runs its tasks periodically, so it does not need to maintain 100% uptime.

Who Should Use Dex?

**TODO**

Similar Software

**TODO**

Connectors

Remote IdPs could implement any auth-N protocol. Connectors contain protocol-specific logic and are used to communicate with remote IdPs. Possible examples of connectors could be: OIDC, LDAP, Local credentials, Basic Auth, etc.

dex ships with an OIDC connector, useful for authenticating with services like Google and Salesforce (or even other dex instances!) and a "local" connector, in which dex itself presents a UI for users to authenticate via dex-stored credentials.

Future connectors can be developed and added as future interoperability requirements emerge.

Relevant Specifications

These specs are referenced and implemented to some degree in the jose package of this project.

OpenID Connect (OIDC) is broken up into several specifications. The following (amongst others) are relevant:

Example OIDC Discovery Endpoints

Next steps:

If you want to try out dex quickly with a single process and no database (do not run this way in production!) take a look at the dev guide.

For running the full stack check out the getting started guide.

Coming Soon

Multiple backing Identity Providers
Identity Management
Authorization

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dex