Configuring Amazon Cognito authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards

You can authenticate and protect your Amazon OpenSearch Service default installation of OpenSearch Dashboards using Amazon Cognito. Amazon Cognito authentication is optional and available only for domains using OpenSearch or Elasticsearch 5.1 or later. If you don't configure Amazon Cognito authentication, you can still protect Dashboards using an IP-based access policy and a proxy server, HTTP basic authentication, or SAML.

Much of the authentication process occurs in Amazon Cognito, but this section offers guidelines and requirements for configuring Amazon Cognito resources to work with OpenSearch Service domains. Standard pricing applies to all Amazon Cognito resources.

Prerequisites

Before you can configure Amazon Cognito authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards, you must fulfill several prerequisites. The OpenSearch Service console helps streamline the creation of these resources, but understanding the purpose of each resource helps with configuration and troubleshooting. Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards requires the following resources:

About the user pool

User pools have two main features: create and manage a directory of users, and let users sign up and log in. For instructions to create a user pool, see Create a User Pool in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

When you create a user pool to use with OpenSearch Service, consider the following:

User pool IDs take the form of region_ID. If you plan to use the AWS CLI or an AWS SDK to configure OpenSearch Service, make note of the ID.

About the identity pool

Identity pools let you assign temporary, limited-privilege roles to users after they log in. For instructions about creating an identity pool, see Identity Pools in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide. When you create an identity pool to use with OpenSearch Service, consider the following:

Identity pool IDs take the form of region:ID-ID-ID-ID-ID. If you plan to use the AWS CLI or an AWS SDK to configure OpenSearch Service, make note of the ID.

About the CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch role

OpenSearch Service needs permissions to configure the Amazon Cognito user and identity pools and use them for authentication. You can use AmazonOpenSearchServiceCognitoAccess, which is an AWS-managed policy, for this purpose. AmazonESCognitoAccess is a legacy policy that was replaced by AmazonOpenSearchServiceCognitoAccess when the service was renamed to Amazon OpenSearch Service. Both policies provide the minimum Amazon Cognito permissions necessary to enable Cognito authentication. For the policy JSON, see the IAM console.

If you use the console to create or configure your OpenSearch Service domain, it creates an IAM role for you and attaches the AmazonOpenSearchServiceCognitoAccess policy (or the AmazonESCognitoAccess policy if it's an Elasticsearch domain) to the role. The default name for this role is CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch.

The role permissions policies AmazonOpenSearchServiceCognitoAccess and AmazonESCognitoAccess both allow OpenSearch Service to complete the following actions on all identity and user pools:

If you use the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs, you must create your own role, attach the policy, and specify the ARN for this role when you configure your OpenSearch Service domain. The role must have the following trust relationship:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "opensearchservice.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

For instructions, see Creating a Role to Delegate Permissions to an AWS Service and Attaching and Detaching IAM Policies in the IAM User Guide.

Configuring a domain to use Amazon Cognito authentication

After you complete the prerequisites, you can configure an OpenSearch Service domain to use Amazon Cognito for Dashboards.

Configuring Amazon Cognito authentication (console)

Because it creates the CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch role for you, the console offers the simplest configuration experience. In addition to the standard OpenSearch Service permissions, you need the following set of permissions to use the console to create a domain that uses Amazon Cognito authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
        "cognito-identity:ListIdentityPools",
        "cognito-idp:ListUserPools",
        "iam:CreateRole",
        "iam:AttachRolePolicy"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "iam:GetRole",
        "iam:PassRole"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/service-role/CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch"
    }
  ]
}

For instructions to add permissions to an identity (user, user group, or role), see Adding IAM identity permissions (console).

If CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch already exists, you need fewer permissions:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
        "cognito-identity:ListIdentityPools",
        "cognito-idp:ListUserPools"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "iam:GetRole",
        "iam:PassRole"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/service-role/CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch"
    }
  ]
}

After your domain finishes processing, see Allowing the authenticated role and Configuring identity providers for additional configuration steps.

Configuring Amazon Cognito authentication (AWS CLI)

Use the --cognito-options parameter to configure your OpenSearch Service domain. The following syntax is used by both the create-domain and update-domain-config commands:

--cognito-options Enabled=true,UserPoolId="user-pool-id",IdentityPoolId="identity-pool-id",RoleArn="arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch"

Example

The following example creates a domain in the us-east-1 Region that enables Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards using the CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch role and provides domain access to Cognito_Auth_Role:

aws opensearch create-domain --domain-name my-domain --region us-east-1 --access-policies '{ "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement":[{"Effect":"Allow","Principal":{"AWS": ["arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Cognito_Auth_Role"]},"Action":"es:ESHttp*","Resource":"arn:aws:es:us-east-1:123456789012:domain/*" }]}' --engine-version "OpenSearch_1.0" --cluster-config InstanceType=m4.xlarge.search,InstanceCount=1 --ebs-options EBSEnabled=true,VolumeSize=10 --cognito-options Enabled=true,UserPoolId="us-east-1_123456789",IdentityPoolId="us-east-1:12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012",RoleArn="arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch"

After your domain finishes processing, see Allowing the authenticated role and Configuring identity providers for additional configuration steps.

Configuring Amazon Cognito Authentication (AWS SDKs)

The AWS SDKs (except the Android and iOS SDKs) support all the operations that are defined in the Amazon OpenSearch Service API Reference, including the CognitoOptions parameter for the CreateDomain and UpdateDomainConfig operations. For more information about installing and using the AWS SDKs, see AWS Software Development Kits.

After your domain finishes processing, see Allowing the authenticated role and Configuring identity providers for additional configuration steps.

Allowing the authenticated role

By default, the authenticated IAM role that you configured by following the guidelines in About the identity pool does not have the necessary privileges to access OpenSearch Dashboards. You must provide the role with additional permissions.

You can include these permissions in an identity-based policy, but unless you want authenticated users to have access to all OpenSearch Service domains, a resource-based policy attached to a single domain is the better approach.

For the Principal, specify the ARN of the Cognito authenticated role that you configured with the guidelines in About the identity pool.

{
   "Version":"2012-10-17",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Principal":{
            "AWS":[
               "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Cognito_identitypoolnameAuth_Role"
            ]
         },
         "Action":[
            "es:ESHttp*"
         ],
         "Resource":"arn:aws:es:region:123456789012:domain/domain-name/*"
      }
   ]
}

For instructions about adding a resource-based policy to an OpenSearch Service domain, see Configuring access policies.

Configuring identity providers

When you configure a domain to use Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards, OpenSearch Service adds an app client to the user pool and adds the user pool to the identity pool as an authentication provider.

Depending on how you configured your user pool, you might need to create user accounts manually, or users might be able to create their own. If these settings are acceptable, you don't need to take further action. Many people, however, prefer to use external identity providers.

To enable a SAML 2.0 identity provider, you must provide a SAML metadata document. To enable social identity providers like Login with Amazon, Facebook, and Google, you must have an app ID and app secret from those providers. You can enable any combination of identity providers.

The easiest way to configure your user pool is to use the Amazon Cognito console. For instructions, see Using Federation from a User Pool and Specifying Identity Provider Settings for Your User Pool App in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

(Optional) Configuring granular access

You might have noticed that the default identity pool settings assign every user who logs in the same IAM role (Cognito_identitypoolAuth_Role), which means that every user can access the same AWS resources. If you want to use fine-grained access control with Amazon Cognito—for example, if you want your organization's analysts to have read-only access to several indices, but developers to have write access to all indices—you have two options:

For a walkthrough that includes fine-grained access control, see Tutorial: Configure a domain with an IAM master user and Amazon Cognito authentication.

User groups and tokens

When you create a user group, you choose an IAM role for members of the group. For information about creating groups, see User Groups in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

After you create one or more user groups, you can configure your authentication provider to assign users their groups' roles rather than the identity pool's default role. Select Choose role from token, then choose either Use default Authenticated role or DENY to specify how the identity pool handles users who aren't part of a group.

Rules

Rules are essentially a series of if statements that Amazon Cognito evaluates sequentially. For example, if a user's email address contains @corporate, Amazon Cognito assigns that user Role_A. If a user's email address contains @subsidiary, it assigns that user Role_B. Otherwise, it assigns the user the default authenticated role.

To learn more, see Using Rule-Based Mapping to Assign Roles to Users in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

(Optional) Customizing the sign-in page

You can use the Amazon Cognito console to upload a custom logo and make CSS changes to the sign-in page. For instructions and a full list of CSS properties, see Specifying App UI Customization Settings for Your User Pool in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

(Optional) Configuring advanced security

Amazon Cognito user pools support advanced security features like multi-factor authentication, compromised credential checking, and adaptive authentication. To learn more, see Managing Security in the Amazon Cognito Developer Guide.

Testing

After you're satisfied with your configuration, verify that the user experience meets your expectations.

If any step of this process fails, see Common configuration issues for troubleshooting information.

Quotas

Amazon Cognito has soft limits on many of its resources. If you want to enable Dashboards authentication for a large number of OpenSearch Service domains, review Quotas in Amazon Cognito and request limit increases as necessary.

Each OpenSearch Service domain adds an app client to the user pool, which adds an authentication provider to the identity pool. If you enable OpenSearch Dashboards authentication for more than 10 domains, you might encounter the "maximum Amazon Cognito user pool providers per identity pool" limit. If you exceed a limit, any OpenSearch Service domains that you try to configure to use Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards can get stuck in a configuration state of Processing.

Common configuration issues

The following tables list common configuration issues and solutions.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "iam:PassRole"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/service-role/CognitoAccessForAmazonOpenSearch"
    }
  ]
}

aws cognito-idp list-user-pools --max-results 60 --region region

aws cognito-identity list-identity-pools --max-results 60 --region region

aws cognito-idp create-user-pool-domain --domain name --user-pool-id id

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Principal": {
      "Federated": "cognito-identity.amazonaws.com"
    },
    "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",
    "Condition": {
      "StringEquals": {
        "cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:aud": "identity-pool-id"
      },
      "ForAnyValue:StringLike": {
        "cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:amr": "authenticated"
      }
    }
  }]
}

Disabling Amazon Cognito authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards

Use the following procedure to disable Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards.

Deleting domains that use Amazon Cognito authentication for OpenSearch Dashboards

To prevent domains that use Amazon Cognito authentication for Dashboards from becoming stuck in a configuration state of Processing, delete OpenSearch Service domains before deleting their associated Amazon Cognito user and identity pools.