My network has a kerberos server for username/password authentication. Machines that run my application have functioning kerberos clients, so users can use kinit, etc.
How do I interact with the server programatically, from my own custom applications? The preferred language for an example is C.
I want users of my application to authenticate against a kerberos server before access to certain functions. I anticipate having to ask them for their username and password - kinit may not have been called.
The machines hosting the applications run OS X and Debian/Linux.
I believe the answer might well involve GSSAPI. If so, are there good tutorials for this?
Sun covers this in their book Solaris Security for Developers Guide. Specifically helpful to you will probably be Appendix A - Sample C-based GSSAPI programs and Chapter 5 - GSS-API Client Example.
Have a look at Heimdal, they have an extensive kerberos API, and the site below has a great doxygen install that describes the API.
http://www.h5l.org
GSSAPI is indeed the recommended approach, but the precise details will depend on your language environment and whether you need interop with Windows. Is your kerberos provider Windows or something else?
On Windows, Kerberos is a native protocol supported by the OS, and many high level Win32 APIs will effectively give you it for free. Making it interop with a non Windows kerberos server is possible but not trivial.
On UNIX, you may first need to install kerberos client support and get that working - but if your network already has a kerberos server, this may have been done for you already.
Windows includes an implementation of GSSAPI as does Java, and most UNIX flavors have an implementation. I believe GSSAPI addons are available for PHP also.
If you can add more specifics on your requirements I can firm this answer up a bit.
Related
I was wondering.. I am setting up a authentication server for our small business as learning opportunity, but it also needs to be functional and usable.
The requirements are:
- Users login on there laptops via this server
- Users login to our NAS (Samba shares)
- Users can login to several services and servers
- I want it to give me a form of access control
- It needs to be linux/CentOS
Now I've read about Kerberos and LDAP but it's just so complicated and I have no idea if it actually does what I want it to..
Has anyone any ideas, suggestions or advise?
Thanks in advance!
Greets,
Thursten
Now I've read about Kerberos and LDAP but it's just so complicated and
I have no idea if it actually does what I want it to.
Indeed, understanding LDAP and Kerberos from scratch can be complicated. Setting what you want from ground up for the first time can be complicated, too. Implementing a solid configuration properly is even more complicated. Maintaining the configuration? Oh, this can be hard, too. :)
To make it easier and to avoid configuration mistakes, you could consider a product such as Apache Directory / ApacheDS. There should be other similar open-source and free or paid products that implement LDAP and Kerberos. That's in case you must use Linux / CentOS.
Note that Microsoft offers Active Directory as part of Windows Server. Windows Server is a paid product, but Kerberos authentication and directory service works out of the box there and are very easy to deploy (they just work). Just wanted to make a note about that in case you have doubts about Windows vs. Linux -based solution.
I have an application in C++ that needs to transmit data securely via web services to our web server.
VPN was the first choice, but out network administrator informs us that we will not support the IPSEC protocols available on Windows Mobile.
Currently we have tried implementing a SSL connection, but found we don't have the libraries for that.
Alternatively, we have been trying PocketPutty to create a SSH tunnel, but that only has a GUI interface, and we're not sure how to get that to work via programming code.
Thank you
OpenSSL supports Windows CE.
SSL 2.0 has been supported since at least CE 5.0.
SecureBlackBox is also supported.
I need to implement a server running on Windows CE 5.0 that shall communicate on a secure connection. To implement a secure connection SSL looks like a good choice.
The Windows CE 5.0 Winsock implementation allows to implement all the SLL stuff using the Winsock Secure Sockets. But the problem is that the referred site states:
SSL does not support the following Winsock functionality ... "Calls to the accept function".
How can I implement a SSL secured server when accept will not work? What other options do I have to implement a secure connection to a Windows CE 5.0 device?
Edit: My current application implementation is in C++. So I would prefer an approach that use the Windows API or a C++ library.
We ported the Mentalis Secure Socket Library to the Compact Framework for when we needed SSL. It was fairly painless, though not without its bugs.
MatrixSSL supports Windows CE:
MatrixSSL™ is an embedded SSL and TLS implementation designed for
small footprint applications and devices. Available is a fully
supported, commercial version as well as an open source version that
is available for download. MatrixSSL allows secure management of
remote devices. Several secure embedded Web servers also use MatrixSSL
for their encryption layer.
MatrixSSL has been ported to operating systems including
FreeRTOS, Bare Metal, eCos, VxWorks, uClinux, eCos, FreeRTOS, ThreadX,
WindowsCE, PocketPC, Palm, pSOS, SMX, BREW, MacOS X, Linux and
Windows.
We've discussed SSO before. I would like to re-enhance the conversation with defined requirements, taking into consideration recent new developments.
In the past week I've been doing market research looking for answers to the following key issues:
The project should should be:
Requirements
SSO solution for web applications.
Integrates into existing developed products.
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
Highly available (99.9%)
Scalable.
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
Nice to have
Contains user Groups & Roles.
Written in Java.
Free Software (open source) solution.
None of the solutions came up so far are "killer choice" which leads me to think I will be tooling several projects (OWASP, AcegiSecurity + X??) hence this discussion.
We are ISV delivering front-end & backend application suite. The frontend is broken into several modules which should act as autonomous unit, from client point of view he uses the "application" - which leads to this discussion regrading SSO.
I would appreciate people sharing their experience & ideas regarding the appropriete solutions.
Some solutions are interesting
CAS
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise
JBoss Identity IDM
JOSSO
Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On
Or more generally speaking this list
Thank you,
Maxim.
What about FreeIPA?
"FreeIPA is an integrated security information management solution combining Linux (Fedora), 389 (formerly known as Fedora Directory Server), MIT Kerberos, NTP, DNS. It consists of a web interface and command-line administration tools."
If you focus on web applications, check out http://oauth.net/.
CAS has strong adoption, user-base, and a strong lead (who recently switched jobs, but is still comitted to the project). It is straightforward to integrate (if you're comfortable writing Java code/configuring Spring beans), and can do all your requirements, noteably:
SSO solution for web applications.
YES
Integrates into existing developed products.
YES (though some cleaner than others - but many modules are available for major products, and it supports common standards (SAML, OpenID).
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
*YES - can easily be implemented, and some extensions to integrate with LDAP (probably the most common user store) are supported
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
NO - though one could be build fairly simply - if you're comfortable with development, and given that this is likely to be a non-trivial project, I'd recommend considering this a non-blocker given that the product is open-source
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
YES - easily customized through some basic HTML/CSS editing
Highly available (99.9%)
YES - both reliable, and can support multiple node/failover scenarios easily
Scalable.
YES - used in many high-traffic environments both intranet and internet
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
YES
Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On is not what you're after - it requires a Windows executable to be deployed. Oracle Access Manager is closer to what you're after (though it's not free or Java-based).
The major commercial players in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market space are CA, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Novell. None of these are free solutions but they have many of the features that you are looking for.
For free software, I recommend DACS: The Distributed Access Control System. I know that one department where I work has implemented this with great success. It doesn't have as many features the commercial IAM products but otherwise is a good solution.
I have used Tivoli Access Manager backing onto Websphere and IIS boxes - the way it writes access information into the page headers is very useful. On the downside, I didnt find the DB2 Ldap backend very scalable or reliable, and you know with IBM this isn't going to come cheap.
Also the asynchronous paths (junctions) used to identify different servers is a bit of a hack really eg http://mysite/myserver/myapp - a very bad idea and not thought through very well.
I'm helping a typical small company that started with a couple of outsourced systems (google apps, svn/trac). added an internal jabber server (ejabber for mostly iChat clients). subscribes to a couple of webservices (e.g. highrisehq). and has a vpn service provided by a pfsense freebsd firewall.
And the net result of all this is that they're drowning in passwords and accounts.
It seems that if they had a single unified login / single signon service they could go a long way to combining these. E.g.: ldap as the master repository, radius linked to it for vpn, ejabber and even WPA2 wireless access, plugins for google app sign on, and perhaps an openid server for external websites like highrisehq.
It seems that all these tools exist separately, but does anyone know of a single box that combines them with a nice GUI and auto-updates? (e.g. like pfsense/m0n0wall for firewalls, freeNAS for storage). It doesn't have to be FOSS. A paid box would be fine too.
I figure this must exist. Microsoft's Active Directory is likely one solution but they'd rather avoid Windows if possible. There seem to be various "AAA" servers that ISPs use or for enterprise firewall/router management, but that doesn't seem quite right.
Any obvious solutions I'm missing? Thanks!
It's been over a year since you originaly asked the question, so I'm guessing you've solved your problem by now. But if someone else is interested in a possible solution I suggest the following:
First of all, I don't know of any "all in one" solution to your problem. However it's quite easy to combine three products that will solve all of your needs and provide a single source for User management and password storage.
The first thing to do is install an LDAP Directory to manage Users and Groups (and possibly other objects outside the scope of your question). This can be OpenLDAP, Apache DS, Microsoft Active Directory, etc. Basically any LDAP Server will do.
Second I recommend installing FreeRADIUS with the LDAP Directory configured as it's backend Service.
Third get a license of Atlassian Crowd. It provides OpenID and Google Apps authentication. Prices for up to 50 Users start at $10 and go all the way up to $8000 for an unlimited user license.
Installation and Configuration of the three is relatively easy. You'll probably put most work into creating your Users and Groups. You can install all three components on a single Server and end up with a box that allows you to authenticate pretty much everything from Desktop Login, over Google Apps and other Web Apps, down to VPN and even Switch, WiFi and Router Login.
Just make sure you configure your Roles and Groups wisely! Otherwise you might end up with some Sales Person being able to do administration on your Firewalls and Routers :-)
I would encourage anyone searching for this type of solution to check out the Gluu Server (http://gluu.org).
Each Gluu Server includes a SAML IDP for SAML SSO, an OpenID Connect Provider (OP) for OpenID Connect SSO, an UMA Policy Decision Point (PDP) for web access management, and a RADIUS and LDAP server.
All the components of the Gluu Server are open source (i.e. Shibboleth, OX, FreeRADIUS, OpenDJ, etc.), including the oxTrust web user interface for managing each component of the server.
For commercial implementations, Gluu will build, support, and monitor this stack of software on a clients VM.
You may not want to standardise passwords across so many apps (especially external ones), though for internal ones using an auth service like LDAP makes sense.
You could solve the issue of remembering passwords with an eSSO like Novell SecureLogin
Also you might be interested in Novell Access Manager and Novell Identity Manager
I too could use such a device, however the only one I could find was a (possibly outdated) data sheet from Infoblox. They seem to have since concentrated on automated network managment and I can't find the LDAP appliance on their current website. I guess building a linux box with the FOSS stuff mentioned above is what everyone does, but it would be great not to have power supplies, disks, fans etc. I suppose you could use something like an EEE PC and put the config on a flash card.
This is something I was looking for as well, and http://www.turnkeylinux.org/openldap looks like the solution: "appliance" installation, and it includes encrypted online backup which is easily restored to a new or replacement machine.