https://github.com/athenz/athenz
Open source platform for X.509 certificate based service authentication and fine grained access control in dynamic infrastructures. Athenz supports provisioning and configuration (centralized authorization) use cases as well as serving/runtime (decentralized authorization) use cases.
https://github.com/athenz/athenz
access-token authorization cloud containers dynamic-infrastructures rbac role-based-access-control service-identity spiffe tls
Last synced: 22 days ago
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Open source platform for X.509 certificate based service authentication and fine grained access control in dynamic infrastructures. Athenz supports provisioning and configuration (centralized authorization) use cases as well as serving/runtime (decentralized authorization) use cases.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/athenz/athenz
- Owner: AthenZ
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2016-11-16T18:23:08.000Z (over 9 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2025-05-09T00:32:31.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-05-09T01:29:03.864Z (about 1 year ago)
- Topics: access-token, authorization, cloud, containers, dynamic-infrastructures, rbac, role-based-access-control, service-identity, spiffe, tls
- Language: Java
- Homepage: https://www.athenz.io
- Size: 67.9 MB
- Stars: 935
- Watchers: 52
- Forks: 285
- Open Issues: 34
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE
- Code of conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- Security: SECURITY.md
- Governance: GOVERNANCE.md
- Roadmap: roadmap.md
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README
# Athenz
[](https://github.com/AthenZ/athenz/actions)
[](https://sourcespy.com/github/athenzathenz/)
[](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/4681)
[](https://app.fossa.io/projects/git%2Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FAthenZ%2Fathenz?ref=badge_shield)
> Athenz is an open source platform for X.509 certificate based service authentication and fine-grained
> access control in dynamic infrastructures. It supports provisioning and configuration (centralized
> authorization) use cases as well as serving/runtime (decentralized authorization) use cases. Athenz
> authorization system utilizes x.509 certificates and industry standard mutual TLS bound oauth2 access
> tokens. The name “Athenz” is derived from “AuthNZ” (N for authentication and Z for authorization).
## Table of Contents
* [Background](#background)
* [Install](#install)
* [Usage](#usage)
* [Contribute](#contribute)
* [License](#license)
## Background
Athenz is an open source platform for X.509 certificate based service authentication
and fine-grained role based access control in dynamic infrastructures. It provides
support for the following three major functional areas.
### Service Authentication
Athenz provides secure identity in the form of short-lived X.509 certificate
for every workload or service deployed in private (e.g. Openstack, K8S, Screwdriver)
or public cloud (e.g. AWS EC2, ECS, Fargate, Lambda). Using these X.509 certificates
clients and services establish secure connections and through mutual TLS authentication verify
each other's identity. The service identity certificates are valid for 30 days only,
and the service identity agents (SIA) part of those frameworks automatically refresh
them daily. The term service within Athenz is more generic than a traditional service.
A service identity could represent a command, job, daemon, workflow, as well as both an
application client, and an application service.
Since Athenz service authentication is based on
[X.509 certificates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509), it is
important that you have a good understanding of what X.509 certificates are
and how they're used to establish secure connections in Internet protocols
such as [TLS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security).
### Role-Based Authorization (RBAC)
Once the client is authenticated with its x.509 certificate, the service
can then check if the given client is authorized to carry out the requested
action. Athenz provides fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC) support
for a centralized management system with support for control-plane access control
decisions and a decentralized enforcement mechanism suitable for data-plane
access control decisions. It also provides a delegated management model that
supports multi-tenant and self-service concepts.
### AWS Temporary Credentials Support
When working with AWS, Athenz provides support to access AWS services
from on-prem services with using AWS temporary credentials rather than
static credentials. Athenz ZTS server can be used to request AWS temporary
credentials for configured AWS IAM roles.
## Install
* [Development Environment](docs/dev_environment.md)
* Local/Development/Production Environment Setup
* [ZMS Server](docs/setup_zms.md)
* [ZTS Server](docs/setup_zts.md)
* [UI Server](docs/setup_ui.md)
* AWS Production Environment Setup
* [Introduction](docs/aws_athenz_setup.md)
## Usage
* Architecture
* [Data Model](docs/data_model.md)
* [System View](docs/system_view.md)
* [Authorization Flow](docs/auth_flow.md)
* Features
* [Service Identity X.509 Certificates - Copper Argos](docs/copper_argos.md)
* Developer Guide
* [Centralized Access Control](docs/cent_authz_flow.md)
* [Java Client/Servlet Example](docs/example_java_centralized_access.md)
* [Go Client/Server Example](docs/example_go_centralized_access.md)
* [Decentralized Access Control](docs/decent_authz_flow.md)
* [Java Client/Servlet Example](docs/example_java_decentralized_access.md)
* Customizing Athenz
* [Principal Authentication](docs/principal_authentication.md)
* [Private Key Store](docs/private_key_store.md)
* [Certificate Signer](docs/cert_signer.md)
* [Service Identity X.509 Certificate Support Requirements - Copper Argos](docs/copper_argos_dev.md)
* [OIDC Authentication Provider Support for AWS EKS](docs/oidc_aws_eks.md)
* User Guide
* [ZMS Client Utility](docs/zms_client.md)
* [ZPU Utility](docs/setup_zpu.md)
* [Registering ZMS Service Identity](docs/reg_service_guide.md)
* [ZMS API](docs/zms_api.md)
* [ZTS API](docs/zts_api.md)
## Contribute
Please refer to the [contributing file](CONTRIBUTING.md) for information about how to get involved. We welcome issues, questions, and pull requests.
You can also contact us for any user and development discussions through our groups:
* [Athenz-Dev](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/athenz-dev) for development discussions
* [Athenz-Users](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/athenz-users) for users questions
The [sourcespy dashboard](https://sourcespy.com/github/yahooathenz/) provides a high level overview of the repository including [module dependencies](https://sourcespy.com/github/yahooathenz/xx-omodulesc-.html), [module hierarchy](https://sourcespy.com/github/yahooathenz/xx-omodules-.html), [external libraries](https://sourcespy.com/github/yahooathenz/xx-ojavalibs-.html), [web services](https://sourcespy.com/github/yahooathenz/xx-owebservices-.html), and other components of the system.
## License
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: [http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0](http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)