Signing out SAML users with single sign-out - Amazon Cognito
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Signing out SAML users with single sign-out

Amazon Cognito supports SAML 2.0 single logout (SLO. With SLO, your application can sign out users from their SAML identity providers (IdPs) when they sign out from your user pool. This way, when users want to sign in to your application again, they must authenticate with their SAML IdP. Otherwise, they might have IdP or user pool browser cookies in place that pass them through to your application without the requirement that they provide credentials.

When you configure your SAML IdP to support Sign-out flow, Amazon Cognito redirects your user with a signed SAML logout request to your IdP. Amazon Cognito determines the redirect location from the SingleLogoutService URL in your IdP metadata. Amazon Cognito signs the sign-out request with your user pool signing certificate.

Authentication flow diagram of Amazon Cognito SAML sign-out. The user requests sign-out and Amazon Cognito redirects them to their provider with a SAML sign-out request.

When you direct a user with a SAML session to your user pool /logout endpoint, Amazon Cognito redirects your SAML user with the following request to the SLO endpoint that's specified in the IdP metadata.

https://[SingleLogoutService endpoint]?
SAMLRequest=[encoded SAML request]&
RelayState=[RelayState]&
SigAlg=http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256&
Signature=[User pool RSA signature]

Your user then returns to your saml2/logout endpoint with a LogoutResponse from their IdP. Your IdP must send the LogoutResponse in an HTTP POST request. Amazon Cognito then redirects them to the redirect destination from their initial sign-out request.

Your SAML provider might send a LogoutResponse with more than one AuthnStatement in it. The sessionIndex in the first AuthnStatement in a response of this type must match the sessionIndex in the SAML response that originally authenticated the user. If the sessionIndex is in any other AuthnStatement, Amazon Cognito won’t recognize the session and your user won’t be signed out.

Amazon Web Services Management Console
To configure SAML sign-out

  1. Create a user pool, app client, and SAML IdP.

  2. When you create or edit your SAML identity provider, under Identity provider information, check the box with the title Add sign-out flow.

  3. From the Social and external providers menu of your user pool, choose your IdP and locate the Signing certificate.

  4. Choose Download as .crt.

  5. Configure your SAML provider to support SAML single logout and request signing, and upload the user pool signing certificate. Your IdP must redirect to /saml2/logout in your user pool domain.

API/CLI

To configure SAML sign-out

Configure single logout with the IDPSignout parameter of a CreateIdentityProvider or UpdateIdentityProvider API request. The following is an example ProviderDetails of an IdP that supports SAML single logout.

"ProviderDetails": { 
      "MetadataURL" : "https://myidp.example.com/saml/metadata",
      "IDPSignout" : "true",,
      "RequestSigningAlgorithm" : "rsa-sha256",
      "EncryptedResponses" : "true",
      "IDPInit" : "true"
}