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garde

A lightweight yet secure authentication API. Uses Redis as primary database.

Table of Contents

Features

  • Built-in security features

    Click here to expand built-in security features 
    > Rate limiter
> Rapid request detection
> Automated behaviour detection
> Multiple IP session detection
> Session blacklisting mechanism
> Request body size limiting
> Request headers, query parameters, path parameters and body sanitization
> mTLS for internal service communication
> MFA
> Only superuser and admins can use administrative endpoints
> Regular users cannot update themselves or any other user. They can only request an update from an admin
> HTTP security headers
> Locking on too many failed login attempts

    garde doesn't use "role"s or "permission group"s or "scope"s as these concepts cause paradoxes that lead to insecure implementations

  • Secure implementation

    Click here to expand secure implementation details 
    > Hashed IP addresses and user agents for storage
> Hiding implementation details from error responses during panic
> No persistence functions that passes user inputs to the database
> Validation checks for all user inputs
> No descriptive error messages in responses, only logging internally
> Session tokens never stored in plain text
> Separate blacklist mechanism for revoked sessions
> Automatic cleanup of expired security records
> Rate limit information in response headers
> Confusing responses to make it difficult for an attacker to guess whether a user exists when querying for a user by email

  • Session-based authentication with server side management using http-only cookies

  • MFA

  • Supports three types of authentication modes, browser-based authentication, API call-based authentication, API key-based authentication

  • mTLS

  • Minimal dependencies with simple configuration

Quick Start

  1. Download the source code

  2. Set mandatory parameters in .env

  3. Run docker compose --profile auth-service-with-redis up

Note

For endpoint documentation, see endpoints
For detailed installation guide, see installation
For integration guide, refer to integration guide
For troubleshooting, refer to troubleshooting guide

Endpoint Documentation

See endpoints

Tip

This documentation page will also be available at https://localhost:8443/swagger/index.html on your own API instance once the server starts (if you've set a different port and domain in your .env file, use those instead of localhost and 8443).

Installation

Mandatory Steps

1. Download the source code

2. Configure and start Redis

a. Using an external Redis instance (if you have your own Redis instance):
  • Set in .env:
REDIS_HOST=your_redis_server_host
REDIS_PORT=your_redis_server_port
REDIS_PASSWORD=your_redis_server_password
REDIS_DB=redis_database_to_use  # Optional
b. Using the bundled Redis container (included in the project's docker-compose):
  • Set in .env:
REDIS_PASSWORD=your_redis_server_password
REDIS_DB=redis_database_to_use  # Optional

3. Configure domain name

  • Set in .env:
DOMAIN_NAME=your_domain  # Can be any value if you are not going to use built-in TLS (See "Configure built-in TLS" section below for detailed information)

4. Set superuser credentials

Set in .env:

SUPERUSER_EMAIL=email_of_superuser_account
SUPERUSER_PASSWORD=password_of_superuser_account   # Must meet password complexity and length(8-64) requirements

5. Run the application

a. Without the project's docker-compose:
  • Install Go
  • Build and run the app:
go mod download
go build -o garde ./cmd
./garde
b. With the project's docker-compose:
  • If you are going to use your own Redis instance (external Redis):
docker compose --profile auth-service-without-redis up
  • If you are going to use the Redis container included in project's docker-compose (bundled Redis container):
docker compose --profile auth-service-with-redis up

Conditional or Optional Steps

1. Configure built-in TLS (Conditional)

Configure the application to use built-in TLS.

Important

If you don't use built-in TLS, you cannot use mTLS and API-key authentication

  • Gather your SSL certificates:

    • Valid TLS certificate from trusted CA (not self-signed)
    • Certificate chain must include intermediate certificates
    • SAN must include all domain variants (e.g., example.com, *.example.com)

  • Set in .env:

USE_TLS=false  # Enable-disable built-in TLS-mTLS
TLS_CERT_PATH=path_to_your_server_cert
TLS_KEY_PATH=path_to_your_server_private_key
PORT=your_https_port  # Optional. The port the application will listen on. Default is 8443

2. Configure mTLS and set API key (Conditional)

Required only if auth service will communicate with internal services.

Important

Built-in TLS must be enabled for mTLS and API-key authentication to work

Set in .env:

TLS_CA_PATH=path_to_your_client_ca_cert  # Comma-separated paths for multiple CAs. You might have multiple client CA certificates for different services
API_KEY=your_api_key  # Must be at least 20 characters long and contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number and one special character

3. Configure Log Level (Optional)

Control the verbosity of application logs for troubleshooting and monitoring.

Set in .env:

LOG_LEVEL=INFO  # Values: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR (default is INFO)

Tip

Available log levels are: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR

4. Mail Server Configuration (Conditional)

Set configurations to be able to send mails. Resetting password functionality requires sending a mail.

Warning

Without sending emails, garde cannot reset users' passwords

DNS Records Required
  • MX record pointing to mail.your-domain.com
  • SPF record: v=spf1 mx -all
  • PTR (reverse DNS) record for your IP

Set in .env:

SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USER=your-email@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=your-app-specific-password
SMTP_FROM=your-email@gmail.com

5. Permissions and Groups System (Conditional)

In addition to configurations stored in the .env file, there are also configurations for application and business logic. These include permissions and groups, defined in JSON files under the /configs directory: permissions.json and groups.json.

The permissions list defines all permissions that your authentication API instance will support, such as access to specific menus in your application dashboard or any other permission you'd like your users to have. If you want to use permissions, you must define them in this file.

The groups list helps organize users and admins. Admins can only manage users who share at least one group with them. Note that admins can edit users even when they're not initially in the same group, but only when adding those users to their group for the first time, meaning if an admin wants to manage a user, they first need to add that user to the their own group.

Note

Superuser is exempt from permissions-groups logic

Both the permissions and groups systems are optional.

Tip

To disable either system, simply remove the corresponding file (permissions.json and/or groups.json) from your /configs directory. For more information, refer to the integration guide and review the sample JSON files in the /configs directory

Permissions

Set in /configs/permissions.json:

{
    "permission_a": {
        "name": "Permission A",
        "description": "Ability to perform some action",
        "groups": ["x", "z"]  // must match the group names inside groups.json
    }
}
Groups

Set in /configs/groups.json:

{
    "x": {
        "name": "X Group",
        "description": "Users of group x"
    }
}

6. Other Configurations (Optional)

See example .env file for full list of optional parameters:

GIN_MODE, CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS, ENFORCE_MFA, ADMIN_USERS, RATE_LIMIT, DISABLE_RAPID_REQUEST_CHECK, DISABLE_USER_AGENT_CHECK, DISABLE_IP_BLACKLISTING, DISABLE_MULTIPLE_IP_CHECK

7. Network Configuration (When required)

Required Ports
${PORT:-8443}  # HTTP(S) port (defaults to 8443 if PORT not set)
Reverse Proxy Setup

Configure Nginx/Apache to:

  • Terminate TLS (if not using app's built-in TLS)
  • Set X-Forwarded-For header
  • Forward WebSocket connections

Example Nginx configuration:

location / {
    proxy_pass https://localhost:8443;
    proxy_ssl_verify off;  # Only for self-signed certs
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}
Firewall Rules
  • Allow inbound: Your auth API instance port
  • Allow outbound: Redis (if using your own), mail server (if enabled)

Important

A restart is needed for any changes to take effect

Verifying Installation

Try a login:

curl -X POST https://your-domain/login -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"email\":\"your_superuser_email\",\"password\":\"your_superuser_password\"}"

Example Configuration Files

Integration Guide

For more information on how garde works and how to integrate, see integration guide

Security Mandates

  • Rotate these frequently: 
    API_KEY
  • Rotate these often: 
    REDIS_PASSWORD
SUPERUSER_PASSWORD
  • Enable HSTS with preload directive in production
  • Configure TLS on the firewall if not using the in-built one
  • Place a proxy server in front of your Redis (if you are using the in-built one, place in front of "redis_network" Docker network)
  • Set RATE_LIMIT to at least 60 in .env in production
  • Do not set DISABLE_RAPID_REQUEST_CHECK to true in .env in production
  • Do not set DISABLE_USER_AGENT_CHECK to true in .env in production
  • Do not set DISABLE_IP_BLACKLISTING to true in .env in production
  • Do not set DISABLE_MULTIPLE_IP_CHECK to true in .env in production
  • Set ENFORCE_MFA=true in .env in production
  • Use separate CA certificates for different client groups
  • Rotate certificates at least once a year

Contributing

See contribution guide