Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise can be leveraged by Apigee in order to protect backend systems from fraudulent API clients in the form of bots.
A reCAPTCHA token is silently and periodically retrieved by a client app and transmitted to an Apigee runtime when an API is invoked.
The sharedflow configuration - that is proposed through this Apigee devrel
reference - is able to get a reCAPTCHA token validation status and a risk score
from the Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise assessment endpoint.
The risk score is a decimal value between 0.0 and 1.0.
The score 1.0 indicates that the interaction poses low risk and is very
likely legitimate, whereas 0.0 indicates that the interaction poses high
risk and might be fraudulent. Between both extremes, the sharedflow's
processing decides if an API invocation must be rejected or not.
For the purpose of this reference we consider a minimum score of 0.6:
this value is configurable and can be set to a higher or lower value depending
on the risk profile of the client application.
The reCAPTCHA enterprise reference can be deployed on both Apigee X and
hybrid. This reference would also work with Apigee Edge if the Service Account
token is obtained through the sharedflow, which invokes the Google reCAPTCHA
enterprise endpoint (sf-recaptcha-enterprise-v1).
- Maven
- NodeJS LTS version or above
- An Apigee organization
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
This reference leverages Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise. Therefore, it is important to note that:
- The reCAPTCHA Enterprise API (
recaptchaenterprise.googleapis.com) must be enabled in your GCP project. - A GCP service account is needed by the Apigee configuration
to securely invoke the Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise assessment endpoint.
This service account is created during the deployment process on the GCP
project you are currently using: the
pipeline.shwill attempt to create a service account only if it doesn't exist.
In case you want to create this service account manually - or with Terraform,
please note that the role roles/recaptchaenterprise.agent must be granted
to it.
export APIGEE_X_ORG=xxx
export APIGEE_X_ENV=xxx
export APIGEE_X_HOSTNAME=api.example.com
./pipeline.sh
There are 2 options to deploy the reCAPTCHA enterprise reference.
Option 1 is the default deployment option.
export IS_RECAPTCHA_MOCK_ENABLED=true
With this option (default) the reCAPTCHA enterprise assessment is not
invoked but a mock response similar to a real one is delivered.
In this case, the risk score is based on the reCAPTCHA token that is
transmitted through the X-Recaptcha-Token HTTP header.
Here are the possible values for the mock reCAPTCHA token, the related risk score and token validity:
| Recaptcha-Token | Risk Score | is Token Valid? |
|---|---|---|
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0 | 0 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.1 | 0.1 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.2 | 0.2 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.3 | 0.3 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.4 | 0.4 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.5 | 0.5 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.6 | 0.6 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.7 | 0.7 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.8 | 0.8 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-0.9 | 0.9 | yes |
| X-RECAPTCHA-TOKEN-1 | 1 | yes |
| Any other value | NA | no |
Functional tests are executed only when this deployment option is selected.
export IS_RECAPTCHA_MOCK_ENABLED=false
With this option, it is not possible to execute functional tests. Nevertheless, 2 client applications are created on Apigee.
A reCAPTCHA sitekey is created for each application:
Always 1is a sitekey that will always deliver a reCAPTCHA token associated to a risk score of1(human)Always 0is a sitekey that will always deliver a reCAPTCHA token associated to a risk score of0(bot)
In order to deliver a valid reCAPTCHA token for test, an API proxy
(recaptcha-deliver-token-v1) is deployed when this option is selected.
The intent of this proxy is to deliver a simple HTML page, which executes
a Javascript client code that can retrieve a valid reCAPTCHA token, based on
one of the 2 sitekeys created on your GCP platform during the deployment
process.
You can invoke the recaptcha-deliver-token-v1 proxy using your favorite
web browser using an URL of this form:
https://${APIGEE_X_HOSTNAME}/recaptcha/v1/token?sitekey=<your-sitekey-here>
As a result on the Web page, you get a valid reCAPTCHA Enterprise token that you can copy/paste for testing purposes:
export RECAPTCHA_TOKEN='<paste-the-token-here>'
The pipeline script deploys on Apigee X or hybrid a
sharedflow (sf-recaptcha-enterprise-v1)
containing the full configuration of the reCAPTCHA
enterprise reference as well as the
following artifacts:
-
recaptcha-data-proxy-v1: a data proxy, which calls the reCAPTCHA enterprise sharedflow. The target endpoint of this proxy is httpbin.org -
recaptcha-deliver-token-v1: an API proxy used to deliver an HTML page that includes a valid reCAPTCHA token (cf. Option 2 above). This proxy is not intended to be used in production but only during test phases. -
The
RecaptchaEnterpriseAPI product -
A developer (
Jane Doe) -
app-recaptcha-enterprise: a single developer app when Option 1 has been selected -
2 developer apps with real app credentials and reCAPTCHA enterprise sitekeys when Option 2 has been selected:
app-recaptcha-enterprise-always0app-recaptcha-enterprise-always1
The sharedflow sf-recaptcha-enterprise-v1 contains 2
DataCapture
policies, which are used to retrieve the token validity
(true or false) and risk score.
These values are extracted from the Google reCAPTCHA enterprise assessment response and store into 2 data collectors:
- dc_riskScore
- dc_TokenValidity
From there, it is possible to create custom reports. Here is an example for each data collector:
The cURL command to create this report is the following:
$ export APIGEE_TOKEN=$(gcloud auth print-access-token)
$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $APIGEE_TOKEN" \
--data '{"name":"my-riskscore-report",
"displayName":"my-riskscore-report",
"metrics":[{"name":"dc_riskScore",
"function":"avg"},
{"name":"dc_riskScore","function":"min"},
{"name":"dc_riskScore","function":"max"},
{"name":"message_count","function":"sum"}],
"dimensions":["apiproxy","proxy_basepath","proxy_pathsuffix"],
"chartType":"column"}' \
https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/"$APIGEE_X_ORG"/reports
The Client IP address (X-Forwarded-For HTTP header) has been intentionally hidden on this report.
The cURL command to create this report is the following:
$ export APIGEE_TOKEN=$(gcloud auth print-access-token)
$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $APIGEE_TOKEN" \
--data '{"name":"my-token-validity-report",
"displayName":"my-token-validity-report",
"metrics":[{"name":"message_count",
"function":"sum"}],
"dimensions":[
"dc_tokenValidity",
"apiproxy",
"proxy_basepath",
"proxy_pathsuffix",
"client_id",
"x_forwarded_for_ip"],
"chartType":"column"}' \
https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/"$APIGEE_X_ORG"/reports
The following sequence diagram provides all the interactions between:
- End-user
- Client app
- Apigee: sharedflow and data proxy
- Google reCAPTCHA enterprise endpoint
- Backend
This sequence diagram is available as a text file.
If needed, you can modify this file and re-generate the related picture (png) using the following command:
./generate_docs.sh
Here is the original sequence diagram:
In order to test this reference, you need an HTTP client.
Using cURL, the request is the following:
curl -H "X-Apikey: <consumer-key>" \
-H "X-Recaptcha-Token: <recaptcha-token>" \
https://${APIGEE_X_HOSTNAME}/recaptcha/v1/data/headers
A reCAPTCHA enterprise token has a validity period of 2 minutes and can only be used once to avoid replay attacks. If a token is reused, it will be considered as invalid with no score associated to it.