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Mohammad Waseem
Mohammad Waseem

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Automating Authentication Flows in DevOps: Zero Budget Strategies for Security Researchers

#automation #devops #security

Automating Authentication Flows in DevOps: Zero Budget Strategies for Security Researchers

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, automation plays a vital role in maintaining secure and efficient workflows. However, many security teams face substantial resource constraints, often lacking dedicated tools or budget for elaborate solutions. This post explores how a security researcher can leverage free and open-source tools to automate authentication flows within DevOps pipelines — all without incurring any costs.

The Challenge

Automating authentication flows is essential for comprehensive testing, continuous security assessments, and seamless integration of security checks into deployment pipelines. The goal is to mimic real-world login scenarios reliably; however, the usual approach involves expensive commercial tools or complex hand-crafted scripts. With zero budget, the challenge becomes: How can we simulate user authentication programmatically, securely, and reliably?

Key Concepts and Strategy

The core idea is to utilize open standards, existing public tools, and secret management best practices to orchestrate auth flows seamlessly. The strategy involves:

  • Using OAuth2/OpenID Connect protocols for standardized authentication.
  • Employing local proxy or scripting to replicate login flows.
  • Managing credentials securely via environment variables or secret management tools.
  • Integrating with CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI.

Practical Implementation

Step 1: Configure a Free Identity Provider

Many identity providers support free tiers or open registration, such as Auth0, Google Identity Platform, or Keycloak. For zero budget, Keycloak is an excellent choice as it is open-source and self-hosted.

Deploying Keycloak locally or in a Docker container:

docker run -d \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  --name keycloak \
  jboss/keycloak
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Create a realm, client, and user credentials through the admin console.

Step 2: Automate Token Acquisition

Using curl or scripting, automate the auth flow to obtain a Bearer token:

export CLIENT_ID='your-client-id'
export CLIENT_SECRET='your-client-secret'
export USERNAME='testuser'
export PASSWORD='testpassword'

curl -X POST \
  -d "client_id=$CLIENT_ID" \
  -d "client_secret=$CLIENT_SECRET" \
  -d "username=$USERNAME" \
  -d "password=$PASSWORD" \
  -d 'grant_type=password' \
  'http://localhost:8080/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/token'
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This command retrieves an access token from the local Keycloak server.

Step 3: Integrate into CI/CD Pipelines

In your DevOps workflows, insert these scripts to automatically acquire tokens and authenticate subsequent API calls or deployment steps.

# Example GitHub Actions step
- name: Obtain Auth Token
  run: |
    TOKEN=$(curl -X POST -d "client_id=$CLIENT_ID" -d "client_secret=$CLIENT_SECRET" -d "username=$USERNAME" -d "password=$PASSWORD" -d 'grant_type=password' http://localhost:8080/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/token | jq -r '.access_token')
    echo "::set-output name=token::$TOKEN"

# Use the token in subsequent steps
- name: Call Secured API
  run: |
    curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ${{ steps.obtain_token.outputs.token }}" https://secured-api.example.com
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Step 4: Maintain Secrets Securely

Instead of hardcoding credentials, leverage secret stores provided by CI/CD platforms or open-source tools like Vault. This ensures secrets are protected at rest and in transit.

Additional Tips

  • Use Docker Compose for local testing of authentication workflows.
  • Employ environment variables to manage secrets in scripts.
  • Automate token refresh if your tests span extended periods.
  • Leverage open-source tools like Postman, Insomnia, or scripting libraries (Python requests, Node axios) for more advanced automation.

Conclusion

Even with zero budget, security researchers can efficiently automate auth flows by harnessing open-source identity tools, scripting, and CI/CD integrations. This approach not only reduces reliance on costly solutions but also provides a flexible, scalable framework for ongoing security validation within DevOps pipelines. Keep exploring cost-effective tools and standard protocols, and you'll find that effective automation is achievable without financial overheads.

References:

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