en›Guides›Server›Mutual Tls

Configuring trusted certificates for mTLS

In order to properly validate client certificates and enable certain authentication methods like two-way TLS or mTLS, you can set a trust store with all the certificates (and certificate chain) the server should be trusting. There are number of capabilities that rely on this trust store to properly authenticate clients using certificates such as Mutual TLS and X.509 Authentication.

Enabling mTLS

Authentication using mTLS is disabled by default. To enable mTLS certificate handling when NQRust-Identity is the server and needs to validate certificates from requests made to NQRust-Identity endpoints, put the appropriate certificates in a truststore and use the following command to enable mTLS:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] start --https-client-auth=<none|request|required>

Using the value required sets up NQRust-Identity to always ask for certificates and fail if no certificate is provided in a request. By setting the value to request, NQRust-Identity will also accept requests without a certificate and only validate the correctness of a certificate if it exists.

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The mTLS configuration and the truststore is shared by all Realms. It is not possible to configure different truststores for different Realms.

Management interface properties are inherited from the main HTTP server, including mTLS settings. It means when mTLS is set, it is also enabled for the management interface. To override the behavior, use the https-management-client-auth property.

Using a dedicated truststore for mTLS

By default, NQRust-Identity uses the System Truststore to validate certificates. See Configuring trusted certificates for details.

If you need to use a dedicated truststore for mTLS, you can configure the location of this truststore by running the following command:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] start --https-trust-store-file=/path/to/file --https-trust-store-password=<value>

Recognized file extensions for a truststore:

.p12, .pkcs12, and .pfx for a pkcs12 file
.jks, and .truststore for a jks file
.ca, .crt, and .pem for a pem file

If your truststore does not have an extension matching its file type, you will also need to set the https-key-store-type option.

Additional resources

Using mTLS for outgoing HTTP requests

Be aware that this is the basic certificate configuration for mTLS use cases where NQRust-Identity acts as server. When NQRust-Identity acts as client instead, e.g. when NQRust-Identity tries to get a token from a token endpoint of a brokered identity provider that is secured by mTLS, you need to set up the HttpClient to provide the right certificates in the keystore for the outgoing request. To configure mTLS in these scenarios, see Configuring outgoing HTTP requests.

Configuring X.509 Authentication

Relevant options

Option	Type or Values	Default
`https-client-auth` Configures the server to require/request client authentication. CLI: `--https-client-auth` Env: `KC_HTTPS_CLIENT_AUTH`	`none`, `request`, `required`	`none`
`https-trust-store-file` The trust store which holds the certificate information of the certificates to trust. CLI: `--https-trust-store-file` Env: `KC_HTTPS_TRUST_STORE_FILE`	File
`https-trust-store-password` The password of the trust store file. CLI: `--https-trust-store-password` Env: `KC_HTTPS_TRUST_STORE_PASSWORD`	String
`https-trust-store-type` The type of the trust store file. If not given, the type is automatically detected based on the file extension. If `fips-mode` is set to `strict` and no value is set, it defaults to `BCFKS`. CLI: `--https-trust-store-type` Env: `KC_HTTPS_TRUST_STORE_TYPE`	String
`https-management-client-auth` Configures the management interface to require/request client authentication. If not given, the value is inherited from HTTP options. Relevant only when something is exposed on the management interface - see the guide for details. CLI: `--https-management-client-auth` Env: `KC_HTTPS_MANAGEMENT_CLIENT_AUTH`	`none`, `request`, `required`	`none`

Configuring trusted certificates Enabling and disabling features