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	| id | title | 
|---|---|
| securing_unleash | Securing Unleash | 
The Unleash API is split into two different paths: /api/client and /api/admin. This makes it easy to have different authentication strategy for the admin interface and the client-api used by the applications integrating with Unleash.
General settings
Unleash uses an encrypted cookie to maintain a user session. This allows users to be logged in across multiple instances of Unleash. To protect this cookie, Unleash will automatically generate a secure token the first time you start Unleash.
Securing the Admin API
To secure the Admin API, you have to tell Unleash that you are using a custom admin authentication and implement your authentication logic as a preHook.
const unleash = require('unleash-server');
const myCustomAdminAuth = require('./auth-hook');
unleash
  .start({
    databaseUrl: 'postgres://unleash_user:passord@localhost:5432/unleash',
    adminAuthentication: 'custom',
    preRouterHook: myCustomAdminAuth,
  })
  .then(unleash => {
    console.log(
      `Unleash started on http://localhost:${unleash.app.get('port')}`,
    );
  });
Additionally, you can trigger the admin interface to prompt the user to sign in by configuring your middleware to return a 401 status on protected routes. The response body must contain a message and a path used to redirect the user to the proper login route.
{
  "message": "You must be logged in to use Unleash",
  "path": "/custom/login"
}
Examples of custom authentication hooks:
We also have a version of Unleash deployed on Heroku which uses Google OAuth 2.0: https://secure-unleash.herokuapp.com
Securing the Client API
A common way to support client access is to use pre-shared secrets. This can be solved by having clients send a shared key in an HTTP header with every client request to the Unleash API. All official Unleash clients should support this.
In the Java client this would look like this:
UnleashConfig unleashConfig = UnleashConfig.builder()
  .appName("my-app")
  .instanceId("my-instance-1")
  .unleashAPI(unleashAPI)
  .customHttpHeader("Authorization", "12312Random")
  .build();
On the Unleash server side, you need to implement a preRouter hook which verifies that all calls to /api/client include this pre-shared key in the defined header. This could look something like this.
const unleash = require('unleash-server');
const sharedSecret = '12312Random';
unleash
  .start({
    databaseUrl: 'postgres://unleash_user:passord@localhost:5432/unleash',
    enableLegacyRoutes: false,
    preRouterHook: app => {
      app.use('/api/client', (req, res, next) => {
        if (req.header('authorization') !== sharedSecret) {
          res.sendStatus(401);
        } else {
          next();
        }
      });
    },
  })
  .then(unleash => {
    console.log(
      `Unleash started on http://localhost:${unleash.app.get('port')}`,
    );
  });
PS! Remember to disable legacy routes by setting the enableLegacyRoutes option to false. This will require all your clients to be on v3.x.