Connect Akto with NGINX

If your API calls are being routed through NGINX, you can use Akto's NGINX module to send traffic to Akto dashboard. Below guide will help you do this:

Creating AWS Policy

1. Go to Quick Start on your Akto dashboard and expand the Connect traffic data section.

2. Scroll down to Data processors setup section.

3. Copy the policy json and click on the Akto Dashboard role link.

4. Click on the JSON tab and paste the policy

5. Click on Review policy button.

6. Enter AktoDashboardPolicy as the policy name and click on Create Policy button

8. Once the policy is created, go back to the dashboard.

Setting up Data processors

1. Click on Setup traffic processors button.

2. This will bring up infra that will process your traffic.

3. Check that you have AKTO_NLB and AKTO_MONGO_IP vars once setup is complete.

Add NGINX module

This methods is recommended when you have end to end TLS and SSL termination happens at NGINX.

The Akto nginx module uses the dynamic module functionality supported by nginx. This requires nginx to be build from source for which the exact steps can be slightly varied depending on the linux flavour, the core process though, remains the same.

Ubuntu / Debian based

1. Record all API calls using nginx-module-njs. (njs is a standard NGINX module built and shipped in every release of NGINX). You can install it by running apt install nginx-module-njs

2. The data is sent to Akto installed in your VPC using nginx-kafka-log-module. You can install it by using nginx dynamic modules functionality as described here

3. Download the js file and save as /etc/nginx/njs/api_log.js

4. In your NGINX conf file - /etc/nginx/nginx.conf , add the following:

load_module /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_http_js_module.so;
load_module /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_http_kafka_log_module.so;

add the following lines in http section of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

subrequest_output_buffer_size 8k;
js_path "/etc/nginx/njs/";
js_var $responseBo "{}";
js_import main2 from api_log.js;
kafka_log_kafka_brokers <AKTO_NLB_IP>:9092;
kafka_log_kafka_buffer_max_messages 100000;

5. In /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf, add 2 lines in server > location section

server {
    location / {
        .....
        js_body_filter main2.to_lower_case;
		kafka_log kafka:akto.api.logs $responseBo;
    }
}

6. Restart NGINX by nginx -s reload. This will start logging all the request-response logs to akto.

Amazon linux 2

1. sudo su -

2. To set up the yum repository for Amazon Linux 2 for nginx, create the file named /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo with the following content. This is needed to install nginx (if not present) and nginx-module-njs.

   [nginx-stable]
   name=nginx stable repo
   baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/amzn2/$releasever/$basearch/
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=1
   gpgkey=https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
   module_hotfixes=true
   priority=9
   
   [nginx-mainline]
   name=nginx mainline repo
   baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/amzn2/$releasever/$basearch/
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=0
   gpgkey=https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
   module_hotfixes=true
   priority=9

3. If nginx is not present install it using yum install nginx else you can skip this step.

4. Check your nginx version using nginx -v and download/extract the source for the same using the following commands.

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-{version}.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-{version}.tar.gz

e.g.

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.26.0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-1.26.0.tar.gz

4. Install nginx-module-njs using yum install nginx-module-njs ( In case of any problem, please refer to the official nginx docs to install nginx-module-njs )

5. We will send data to Akto traffic processor using nginx-kafka-log-module. To clone it run: git clone https://github.com/kaltura/nginx-kafka-log-module.git

6. We can install nginx-kafka-log-module using the steps below. For the official nginx docs to install nginx dynamic modules refer this.

# Enable EPEL repository if not already enabled
amazon-linux-extras install epel -y
# Install librdkafka and its development package
yum install librdkafka librdkafka-devel -y
yum install pcre pcre-devel -y
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" -y
# go to nginx directory, which we downloaded in step 3
cd nginx-1.26.0/
./configure --with-compat --add-dynamic-module=../nginx-kafka-log-module --with-cc-opt="-I/usr/include" --with-ld-opt="-L/usr/lib"
make modules
cp objs/ngx_http_kafka_log_module.so /etc/nginx/modules/

9. Add the Akto njs code to nginx njs directory using the following commands.

mkdir /etc/nginx/njs
curl -o /etc/nginx/njs/api_log.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akto-api-security/nginx-middleware/master/api_log.js

10. To configure nginx, in your nginx configuration file ( /etc/nginx/nginx.conf ), add the following lines to top:

load_module /etc/nginx/modules/ngx_http_js_module.so;
load_module /etc/nginx/modules/ngx_http_kafka_log_module.so;

11. Also add this in http section of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Replace the AKTO_NLB_IP, with the one you obtained in setting up data processors.

subrequest_output_buffer_size 8k;
js_path "/etc/nginx/njs/";
js_var $responseBo "{}";
js_import main2 from api_log.js;
kafka_log_kafka_brokers "<AKTO_NLB_IP>:9092";
kafka_log_kafka_buffer_max_messages 100000;

12. Add this to .conf [ You can get the path of this file in the include section of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file ]. Make sure that the traffic here is being proxied/sent to your actual application.

location / {
    js_body_filter main2.to_lower_case;
    kafka_log kafka:akto.api.logs $responseBo;
    ......
}

13. nginx -s reload [ Use this command if nginx is already running, else use : systemctl start nginx ]

Amazon linux 2023

1. sudo su -

2. To set up the yum repository for Amazon Linux 2023 for nginx, create the file named /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo with the following content. This is needed to install nginx (if not present) and nginx-module-njs.

   [nginx-stable]
   name=nginx stable repo
   baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/amzn/2023/$basearch/
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=1
   gpgkey=https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
   module_hotfixes=true
   priority=9
   
   [nginx-mainline]
   name=nginx mainline repo
   baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/amzn/2023/$basearch/
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=0
   gpgkey=https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
   module_hotfixes=true
   priority=9

3. If nginx is not present install it using yum install nginx -y else you can skip this step.

4. Check your nginx version using nginx -v and download/extract the source for the same using the following commands.

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-{version}.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-{version}.tar.gz

e.g.

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.26.0.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-1.26.0.tar.gz

4. Install nginx-module-njs using yum install nginx-module-njs ( In case of any problem, please refer to the official nginx docs to install nginx-module-njs )

5. We will send data to Akto traffic processor using nginx-kafka-log-module. To clone it run: git clone https://github.com/kaltura/nginx-kafka-log-module.git

6. We can install nginx-kafka-log-module using the steps below. For the official nginx docs to install nginx dynamic modules refer this.

   i. To set up the yum repository for Amazon Linux 2023 for confluent, create the file named /etc/yum.repos.d/confluent.repo with the following content.

   [Confluent-Clients]
   name=Confluent Clients repository
   baseurl=https://packages.confluent.io/clients/rpm/centos/9/$basearch
   gpgcheck=1
   gpgkey=https://packages.confluent.io/clients/rpm/archive.key
   enabled=1

   ii. Run the following commands:

   yum install librdkafka1 librdkafka-devel -y
   yum install pcre pcre-devel -y
   yum groupinstall "Development Tools" -y
   # go to nginx directory, which we downloaded in step 3
   cd nginx-1.26.0/
   ./configure --with-compat --add-dynamic-module=../nginx-kafka-log-module --with-cc-opt="-I/usr/include" --with-ld-opt="-L/usr/lib"
   make modules
   cp objs/ngx_http_kafka_log_module.so /etc/nginx/modules/

7. Add the Akto njs code to nginx njs directory using the following commands.

mkdir /etc/nginx/njs
curl -o /etc/nginx/njs/api_log.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akto-api-security/nginx-middleware/master/api_log.js

10. To configure nginx, in your nginx configuration file ( /etc/nginx/nginx.conf ), add the following lines to top:

load_module /etc/nginx/modules/ngx_http_js_module.so;
load_module /etc/nginx/modules/ngx_http_kafka_log_module.so;

11. Also add this in http section of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Replace the AKTO_NLB_IP, with the one you obtained in setting up data processors.

subrequest_output_buffer_size 8k;
js_path "/etc/nginx/njs/";
js_var $responseBo "{}";
js_import main2 from api_log.js;
kafka_log_kafka_brokers "<AKTO_NLB_IP>:9092";
kafka_log_kafka_buffer_max_messages 100000;

12. Add this to .conf [ You can get the path of this file in the include section of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file ]. Make sure that the traffic here is being proxied/sent to your actual application.

location / {
    js_body_filter main2.to_lower_case;
    kafka_log kafka:akto.api.logs $responseBo;
    ......
}

13. nginx -s reload [ Use this command if nginx is already running, else use : systemctl start nginx ]

Note: We have benchmarked an nginx server with and without akto nginx traffic module. The results for the same are as follows:

metrics	vanilla nginx	nginx with akto module
avg. cpu usage	upto 36%	upto 38%
avg. memory usage	0.5%	0.5%

The server setup being used is an AWS EC2 (t3a.small: 2CPU + 2GB RAM), with around 1600-1800 requests being fired per second to the server continuously for over a minute (~110k requests per minute). Here nginx is configured as a reverse proxy to a node.js backend server.