TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error when iFraming Kibana dashboard using cookies

Question

I'm attempting to embed password protected Kibana dashboards inside an iFrame to my Node powered Express application, based on information in this thread. Kibana is protected using X-Pack and requires users to login in order to see their visualised data.

This currently requires the user to log in twice, once to login into the application and again to access Kibana dashboards, which is not the goal.

Following information in this thread, I implemented some code that makes a pre-flight POST request to https://elk-stack.my.domain:5601/api/security/v1/login to obtain a cookie 🍪

This client side request...

function preFlightKibanaAuth () {
    ...
    $.ajax({
      type: 'POST',
      url: '/kibana-auth',
      datatype: 'json',
      success: function (response) {
        if (response && response.authenticated) {
          $('iframe#kibana-dashboard').prop('src', 'https://elk-stack.my.domain:5601/s/spacename/app/kibana#/dashboards?_g=()')
        }
      },
      error: function (err) {
        console.log(err)
      }
    })
  }

Is routed to this route...

router
  .route('/kibana-auth')
  .post((req, res, next) => {
    ... 
    if (authorised) {
      ...
      authenticateKibana(req)
          .then(cookie => {
            if (cookie && cookie.name && cookie.value) {
              res.set('Set-Cookie', `${cookie.name}=${cookie.value}; Domain=my.domain; Path=/; Secure; HttpOnly`)
              res.send({ 'authenticated': true })
            } else {
              res.send({ 'authenticated': false })
            }
          })
          .catch((err) => {
            logger.error(err)
            res.send({ 'authenticated': false })
          })
    }
    ...
  })

Which makes it's way to this function, where the cookie is actually obtained and parsed...

authenticateKibana () {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      ...
      request({
        method: 'POST',
        uri: `https://elk-stack.my.domain:5601/api/security/v1/login`,
        headers: {
          'kibana-version': '6.5.4',
          'kibana-xsrf': 'xsrftoken',    
        },
        type: 'JSON',
        form: {
          password: 'validPassword',
          username: 'validUsername'
        }
      }, function (error, res, body) {
        if (!error) {
          let cookies = cookieParser.parse(res)
          cookies.forEach(function (cookie) {
            if (cookie.name.startsWith('kibana')) {
              // Got Kibana Cookie
              return resolve(cookie)
            }
          })
        } 
        ... 
      })
    })
  }

This works great and I can successfully authenticate with Kibana, obtain the cookie and set in the clients browser (see below screenshot).

The issue I'm seeing is when the src of the iFrame is updated in the success callback of the preFlightKibanaAuth() request. I can see the authenticated Kibana dashboard load in briefly (so the cookie is allowing the client to view their authenticated dashboards), however, I then see multiple GET requests to /login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana that results in a TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error.

I've found the below comment in the GitHub issues page, which I think maybe the issue I'm having in some way because I'm seeing this in the logs (see bottom): "message":"Found 2 auth sessions when we were only expecting 1.". I just can't figure it out!

Usually what causes this is having multiple cookies for the same "domain" and "name", but with different values for "path". If you open the developer tools in Chrome, then click on the Application tab, then expand the Cookies section, and click on the domain, do you have multiple cookies with the name "sid"? If so, you can fix this issue by clearing all of them.

I changed the cookie name from "sid" to "kibana" but don't have two of them visible in Applications tab, just the one I set following the call to /kibana-auth.

The iFrame then loads in the https://elk-stack.my.domain:5601/s/spacename/app/kibana#/dashboards?_g=() and the issue arises. Clearing my cookies just resulted in fetching and setting another one (if we don't already have one), which is what is required, so this didn't solve the problem.

When I send the Set-Cookie header back to the client, I am setting the Domain to the main domain: my.domain, which ends up as .my.domain. The Kibana instance is on a subdomain: elk-stack.my.domain and if I login to the Kibana front end, I can see that the Domain of the cookie it returns is set to elk-stack.my.domain. I'm not sure that should matter though.

Can anyone please shed any light on this or point me in the direction?

Thanks in advance

Here's a glimpse at the logging info from /var/log/kibana/kibana.stdout when a request is made. There's a bit of junk in there still but you can still see what's happening.

{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate user request to /api/security/v1/login."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate via header."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request has been authenticated via header."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"post","statusCode":204,"req":{"url":"/api/security/v1/login","method":"post","headers":{"kibana-version":"6.5.4","kbn-xsrf":"6.5.4","host":"10.30.10.30:5601","content-type":"application/
x-www-form-urlencoded","content-length":"35","connection":"close"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102"},"res":{"statusCode":204,"responseTime":109,"contentLength":9},"message":"POST /api/security/v1/login 204 109ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/s/spacename/app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["warning","security","auth","session"],"pid":7857,"message":"Found 2 auth sessions when we were only expecting 1."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate user request to /app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate via header."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Authorization header is not presented."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:44Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/app/kibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":3,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /app/kibana 302 3ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"\"getConnections\" has been called."}
{"type":"ops","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"os":{"load":[0.2568359375,0.31640625,0.3173828125],"mem":{"total":33567580160,"free":346796032},"uptime":1585351},"proc":{"uptime":33636.577,"mem":{"rss":322772992,"heapTotal":225566720,"heapUsed":184707176,"external":2052484},"delay":6.417333126068115},"load":{"requests":{"5601":{"total":2,"disconnects":0,"statusCodes":{"204":1,"302":1}}},"concurrents":{"5601":1},"responseTimes":{"5601":{"avg":56,"max":109}},"sockets":{"http":{"total":0},"https":{"total":0}}},"message":"memory: 176.2MB uptime: 9:20:37 load: [0.26 0.32 0.32] delay: 6.417"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","monitoring-ui","kibana-monitoring"],"pid":7857,"message":"Received Kibana Ops event data"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","monitoring-ui","kibana-monitoring"],"pid":7857,"message":"Received Kibana Ops event data"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":2,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana 302 2ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}

The below then repeats over and over...

{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/s/spacename/app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["warning","security","auth","session"],"pid":7857,"message":"Found 2 auth sessions when we were only expecting 1."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate user request to /app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate via header."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Authorization header is not presented."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/app/kibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":2,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /app/kibana 302 2ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":2,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana 302 2ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["plugin","debug"],"pid":7857,"message":"Checking Elasticsearch version"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/s/spacename/app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["warning","security","auth","session"],"pid":7857,"message":"Found 2 auth sessions when we were only expecting 1."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate user request to /app/kibana."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Trying to authenticate via header."}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","security","basic"],"pid":7857,"message":"Authorization header is not presented."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/app/kibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":2,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /app/kibana 302 2ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["trace","legacy","service"],"pid":7857,"message":"Request will be handled by proxy GET:/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana."}
{"type":"response","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":[],"pid":7857,"method":"get","statusCode":302,"req":{"url":"/login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana","method":"get","headers":{"host":"elk-stack.my.domain:5601","connection":"keep-alive","upgrade-insecure-requests":"1","user-agent":"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/71.0.3578.98 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, br","accept-language":"en-GB,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,la;q=0.7,fr;q=0.6"},"remoteAddress":"192.168.56.102","userAgent":"192.168.56.102","referer":"https://local.local.my.domain/fortigate/reporting/dashboard"},"res":{"statusCode":302,"responseTime":2,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /login?next=%2Fs%2Fspacename%2Fapp%2Fkibana 302 2ms - 9.0B"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["debug","legacy","proxy"],"pid":7857,"message":"Event is being forwarded: connection"}
{"type":"log","@timestamp":"2019-02-12T19:47:45Z","tags":["plugin","debug"],"pid":7857,"message":"Checking Elasticsearch version"}

Kibana Version: 6.5.4

Elasticsearch: 6.5.4

Answer 1

At first, I thought this all turned out to be a mismatch in the Cookie attributes, alas, it wasn't!

Received some info from the Elastic team...

The cookie which Kibana replies with generally sets the httpOnly flag, and the secure flag (when hosted over https), in addition to the domain. If any of the settings differ for the cookie which you're trying to force Kibana to use, you'll see 2 cookies being submitted and behaviour similar to what you're seeing.

Thought I was setting the cookie with different attributes, but wasn't... ended up using a plugin to get this off the ground: https://readonlyrest.com/