authentication for APIGateway using CloudFront cookies

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I am working on a setup where website access to abc.example.com and def.example.com and so on is secured using CloudFront signed cookies set by Lambda@Edge. There also is a central APIGateway-based web API under the domain api.example.com that is being called from all websites.

I am now trying to add authentication to the API so that only users having the cloudfront signed cookies can make a call on behalf of the website where call originates from.

Is there a way to do so?

1 Answer
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Accepted Answer

You could put the traffic to your API gateway via CloudFront, and protect API gateway with API key.

So you would have "api.example.com" -> CloudFront (Where you verify the cookie + add X-API-KEY to request -> API Gateway To add the x-api-key you can specify it in the CloudFront settings without the need to use Lambda@Edge https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/add-origin-custom-headers.html

Here the information on how to set up API Gateway with its own CloudFront distribution

Miki
answered 2 years ago
  • I did check it out but got the impression it is not a fit. the challenge is that I need to use a cookie that belongs to domain abc.example.com to authenticate against api.example.com. But I cannot set that cookie when at abc.example.com as it is another domain. I would have to use a higher domain like example.com. However, then users from abc.example.com could access def.example.com what I don't want them to be able to. I now ended up with a scenario where I have Lambda@Edge create a JWT that has the originating domain, e.g. abc.example.com as payload and I do set that cookie under .example.com so it will be sent along with every api call to api.example.com.

  • still, looks like that approach is the only feasible solution

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