Files
netbird/proxy
mlsmaycon 167ee08e14 feat(private-service): expose NetBird-only services over tunnel peers
Adds a new "private" service mode for the reverse proxy: services
reachable exclusively over the embedded WireGuard tunnel, gated by
per-peer group membership instead of operator auth schemes.

Wire contract
- ProxyMapping.private (field 13): the proxy MUST call
  ValidateTunnelPeer and fail closed; operator schemes are bypassed.
- ProxyCapabilities.private (4) + supports_private_service (5):
  capability gate. Management never streams private mappings to
  proxies that don't claim the capability; the broadcast path applies
  the same filter via filterMappingsForProxy.
- ValidateTunnelPeer RPC: resolves an inbound tunnel IP to a peer,
  checks the peer's groups against service.AccessGroups, and mints
  a session JWT on success. checkPeerGroupAccess fails closed when
  a private service has empty AccessGroups.
- ValidateSession/ValidateTunnelPeer responses now carry
  peer_group_ids + peer_group_names so the proxy can authorise
  policy-aware middlewares without an extra management round-trip.
- ProxyInboundListener + SendStatusUpdate.inbound_listener: per-account
  inbound listener state surfaced to dashboards.
- PathTargetOptions.direct_upstream (11): bypass the embedded NetBird
  client and dial the target via the proxy host's network stack for
  upstreams reachable without WireGuard.

Data model
- Service.Private (bool) + Service.AccessGroups ([]string, JSON-
  serialised). Validate() rejects bearer auth on private services.
  Copy() deep-copies AccessGroups. pgx getServices loads the columns.
- DomainConfig.Private threaded into the proxy auth middleware.
  Request handler routes private services through forwardWithTunnelPeer
  and returns 403 on validation failure.
- Account-level SynthesizePrivateServiceZones (synthetic DNS) and
  injectPrivateServicePolicies (synthetic ACL) gate on
  len(svc.AccessGroups) > 0.

Proxy
- /netbird proxy --private (embedded mode) flag; Config.Private in
  proxy/lifecycle.go.
- Per-account inbound listener (proxy/inbound.go) binding HTTP/HTTPS
  on the embedded NetBird client's WireGuard tunnel netstack.
- proxy/internal/auth/tunnel_cache: ValidateTunnelPeer response cache
  with single-flight de-duplication and per-account eviction.
- Local peerstore short-circuit: when the inbound IP isn't in the
  account roster, deny fast without an RPC.
- proxy/server.go reports SupportsPrivateService=true and redacts the
  full ProxyMapping JSON from info logs (auth_token + header-auth
  hashed values now only at debug level).

Identity forwarding
- ValidateSessionJWT returns user_id, email, method, groups,
  group_names. sessionkey.Claims carries Email + Groups + GroupNames
  so the proxy can stamp identity onto upstream requests without an
  extra management round-trip on every cookie-bearing request.
- CapturedData carries userEmail / userGroups / userGroupNames; the
  proxy stamps X-NetBird-User and X-NetBird-Groups on r.Out from the
  authenticated identity (strips client-supplied values first to
  prevent spoofing).
- AccessLog.UserGroups: access-log enrichment captures the user's
  group memberships at write time so the dashboard can render group
  context without reverse-resolving stale memberships.

OpenAPI/dashboard surface
- ReverseProxyService gains private + access_groups; ReverseProxyCluster
  gains private + supports_private. ReverseProxyTarget target_type
  enum gains "cluster". ServiceTargetOptions gains direct_upstream.
  ProxyAccessLog gains user_groups.
2026-05-20 22:46:18 +02:00
..

Netbird Reverse Proxy

The NetBird Reverse Proxy is a separate service that can act as a public entrypoint to certain resources within a NetBird network. At a high level, the way that it operates is:

  • Configured routes are communicated from the Management server to the proxy.
  • For each route the proxy creates a NetBird connection to the NetBird Peer that hosts the resource.
  • When traffic hits the proxy at the address and path configured for the proxied resource, the NetBird Proxy brings up a relevant authentication method for that resource.
  • On successful authentication the proxy will forward traffic onwards to the NetBird Peer.

Proxy Authentication methods supported are:

  • No authentication
  • Oauth2/OIDC
  • Emailed Magic Link
  • Simple PIN
  • HTTP Basic Auth Username and Password

Management Connection and Authentication

The Proxy communicates with the Management server over a gRPC connection. Proxies act as clients to the Management server, the following RPCs are used:

  • Server-side streaming for proxied service updates.
  • Client-side streaming for proxy logs.

To authenticate with the Management server, the proxy server uses Machine-to-Machine OAuth2. If you are using the embedded IdP //TODO: explain how to get credentials. Otherwise, create a new machine-to-machine profile in your IdP for proxy servers and set the relevant settings in the proxy's environment or flags (see below).

User Authentication

When a request hits the Proxy, it looks up the permitted authentication methods for the Host domain. If no authentication methods are registered for the Host domain, then no authentication will be applied (for fully public resources). If any authentication methods are registered for the Host domain, then the Proxy will first serve an authentication page allowing the user to select an authentication method (from the permitted methods) and enter the required information for that authentication method. If the user is successfully authenticated, their request will be forwarded through to the Proxy to be proxied to the relevant Peer. Successful authentication does not guarantee a successful forwarding of the request as there may be failures behind the Proxy, such as with Peer connectivity or the underlying resource.

TLS

Due to the authentication provided, the Proxy uses HTTPS for its endpoint, even if the underlying service is HTTP. Certificate generation can either be via ACME (by default, using Let's Encrypt, but alternative ACME providers can be used) or through certificate files. When not using ACME, the proxy server attempts to load a certificate and key from the files tls.crt and tls.key in a specified certificate directory. When using ACME, the proxy server will store generated certificates in the specified certificate directory.

Auth UI

The authentication UI is a Vite + React application located in the web/ directory. It is embedded into the Go binary at build time.

To build the UI:

cd web
npm install
npm run build

For UI development with hot reload (served at http://localhost:3031):

npm run dev

The built assets in web/dist/ are embedded via //go:embed and served by the web.ServeHTTP handler.

Configuration

NetBird Proxy deployment configuration is via flags or environment variables, with flags taking precedence over the environment. The following deployment configuration is available:

Flag Env Purpose Default
-debug NB_PROXY_DEBUG_LOGS Enable debug logging false
-mgmt NB_PROXY_MANAGEMENT_ADDRESS The address of the management server for the proxy to get configuration from. "https://api.netbird.io:443"
-addr NB_PROXY_ADDRESS The address that the reverse proxy will listen on. ":443
-url NB_PROXY_URL The URL that the proxy will be reached at (where endpoints will be CNAMEd to). If unset, this will fall back to the proxy address. "proxy.netbird.io"
-cert-dir NB_PROXY_CERTIFICATE_DIRECTORY The location that certificates are stored in. "./certs"
-acme-certs NB_PROXY_ACME_CERTIFICATES Whether to use ACME to generate certificates. false
-acme-addr NB_PROXY_ACME_ADDRESS The HTTP address the proxy will listen on to respond to HTTP-01 ACME challenges ":80"
-acme-dir NB_PROXY_ACME_DIRECTORY The directory URL of the ACME server to be used "https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory"
-oidc-id NB_PROXY_OIDC_CLIENT_ID The OAuth2 Client ID for OIDC User Authentication "netbird-proxy"
-oidc-secret NB_PROXY_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET The OAuth2 Client Secret for OIDC User Authentication ""
-oidc-endpoint NB_PROXY_OIDC_ENDPOINT The OAuth2 provider endpoint for OIDC User Authentication "https://api.netbird.io/oauth2"
-oidc-scopes NB_PROXY_OIDC_SCOPES The OAuth2 scopes for OIDC User Authentication, comma separated "openid,profile,email"