authelia/docs/content/en/configuration/session/introduction.md

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Session Session Configuration Configuring the Session / Cookie settings. 2022-06-15T17:51:47+10:00 false
configuration
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session
105100 true
/c/session
/docs/configuration/session/

Authelia relies on session cookies to authenticate users. When the user visits a website of the protected domain example.com for the first time, Authelia detects that there is no cookie for that user. Consequently, Authelia redirects the user to the login portal through which the user should authenticate to get a cookie which is valid for *.example.com, meaning all websites of the domain. At the next request, Authelia receives the cookie associated to the authenticated user and can then order the reverse proxy to let the request pass through to the application.

Configuration

session:
  secret: insecure_session_secret

  name: authelia_session
  same_site: lax
  inactivity: 5m
  expiration: 1h
  remember_me: 1M

  cookies:
    - name: authelia_session
      domain: example.com
      same_site: lax
      inactivity: 5m
      expiration: 1h
      remember_me: 1d

Providers

There are currently two providers for session storage (three if you count Redis Sentinel as a separate provider):

  • Memory (default, stateful, no additional configuration)
  • Redis (stateless).
  • Redis Sentinel (stateless, highly available).

Kubernetes or High Availability

It's important to note when picking a provider, the stateful providers are not recommended in High Availability scenarios like Kubernetes. Each provider has a note beside it indicating it is stateful or stateless the stateless providers are recommended.

Options

secret

{{< confkey type="string" required="yes" >}}

Important Note: This can also be defined using a secret which is strongly recommended especially for containerized deployments.

The secret key used to encrypt session data in Redis.

It's strongly recommended this is a Random Alphanumeric String with 64 or more characters.

domain

{{< confkey type="string" required="no" >}}

Deprecation Notice: This option is deprecated. See the cookies section instead.

The domain the cookie is assigned to protect. This must be the same as the domain Authelia is served on or the root of the domain. For example if listening on auth.example.com the cookie should be auth.example.com or example.com.

This value automatically maps to a single cookies configuration using the default values. It cannot be assigned at the same time as a cookies configuration.

name

{{< confkey type="string" default="authelia_session" required="no" >}}

The default name value for all cookies configurations.

same_site

{{< confkey type="string" default="lax" required="no" >}}

The default same_site value for all cookies configurations.

inactivity

{{< confkey type="duration" default="5m" required="no" >}}

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The default inactivity value for all cookies configurations.

expiration

{{< confkey type="duration" default="1h" required="no" >}}

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The default expiration value for all cookies configurations.

remember_me

{{< confkey type="duration" default="1M" required="no" >}}

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The default remember_me value for all cookies configurations.

cookies

The list of specific cookie domains that Authelia is configured to handle. Domains not properly configured will automatically be denied by Authelia. The list allows administrators to define multiple session cookie domain configurations with individual settings.

name

{{< confkey type="string" required="no" >}}

Default Value: This option takes its default value from the name setting above.

The name of the session cookie. By default this is set to the name value in the main session configuration section.

domain

{{< confkey type="string" required="yes" >}}

The domain the cookie is assigned to protect. This must be the same as the domain Authelia is served on or the root of the domain, and consequently if the authelia_url is configured must be able to read and write cookies for the domain. For example if listening on auth.example.com the cookie should be either auth.example.com or example.com.

Please note most good DynamicDNS solutions fall into a specially protected group of domains and browsers do not allow you to write cookies for the root domain. i.e. if you have been assigned john.duckdns.org you can't use duckdns.org for the domain value as browsers will not allow john.duckdns.org to read or write cookies for duckdns.org.

Consequently, if you have john.duckdns.org and mary.duckdns.org you cannot share cookies between these domains.

authelia_url

{{< confkey type="string" required="no" >}}

Note: The AuthRequest implementation does not support redirection control on the authorization server. This means that the authelia_url option is ineffectual for both NGINX and HAProxy, or any other proxy which uses the AuthRequest implementation.

This is a completely optional URL which is the root URL of your Authelia installation for this cookie domain which can be used to generate the appropriate redirection for proxies which support this.

If this option is absent you must use the appropriate query parameter or header for your relevant proxy.

same_site

{{< confkey type="string" required="no" >}}

Default Value: This option takes its default value from the same_site setting above.

Sets the cookies SameSite value. Prior to offering the configuration choice this defaulted to None. The new default is Lax. This option is defined in lower-case. So for example if you want to set it to Strict, the value in configuration needs to be strict.

You can read about the SameSite cookie in detail on the MDN. In short setting SameSite to Lax is generally the most desirable option for Authelia. None is not recommended unless you absolutely know what you're doing and trust all the protected apps. Strict is not going to work in many use cases and we have not tested it in this state but it's available as an option anyway.

inactivity

{{< confkey type="duration" required="no" >}}

Default Value: This option takes its default value from the inactivity setting above.

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The period of time the user can be inactive for until the session is destroyed. Useful if you want long session timers but don't want unused devices to be vulnerable.

expiration

{{< confkey type="duration" required="no" >}}

Default Value: This option takes its default value from the expiration setting above.

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The period of time before the cookie expires and the session is destroyed. This is overriden by remember_me when the remember me box is checked.

remember_me

{{< confkey type="duration" required="no" >}}

Default Value: This option takes its default value from the remember_me setting above.

Note: This setting uses the duration notation format. Please see the common options documentation for information on this format.

The period of time before the cookie expires and the session is destroyed when the remember me box is checked. Setting this to -1 disables this feature entirely for this session cookie domain.

Security

Configuration of this section has an impact on security. You should read notes in security measures for more information.