oh...@cox.net wrote:
---- "André Warnier" <a...@ice-sa.com> wrote:
oh...@cox.net wrote:
Hi,
I'm new here, and hope that someone can help.
I was wondering if any of the LDAP-type realms (e.g., JNDIRealm, etc.) support
an authentication mode where no password or credentials are required? In other
words, where just a userID/username is presented, and if that userID/username
is present in the LDAP, then the user gets authenticated?
You have to be VERY specific here about what you mean, because this is a very
delicate area.
If you mean : "does there exist any way by which Tomcat can authenticate a user, without
forcing this user to go through a login dialog with userid and password ?"
then the answer is : yes, several (*). But the applicability of each depends very much on
the exact circumstances.
If you mean : "does there exist any /standard/ authentication mechanism in Tomcat whereby,
/with/ a login dialog, the user could be authenticated without providing a password,
although the authentication back-end (e.g. LDAP) has a non-empty password registered for
that user ?"
then the answer is no, definitely. Because such a mechanism would be a HUGE security
hole, so it is certainly not provided as any standard authentication framework.
(which does not mean that you could not invent your own mechanism).
Also, when you are mentioning LDAP, do you really mean the standard LDAP (which is just
basically a database, and is not per se an "authentication mechanism"), or do you mean
"Windows domain authentication, backed up by an Active Directory server" ?
Or something else ?
There is so much variation possible here, that it may be better to describe what you want
to achieve really, rather than asking questions about this or that mechanism right away.
(*) for example, look here :
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/windows-auth-howto.html
http://waffle.codeplex.com/
http://www.ioplex.com/jespa.html
Hi Andre,
Sorry. I should have been clearer in my explanation and my question, so let me
try again.
Our configuration has an Apache in front of the Tomcat, with the Apache
reverse-proxying (using mod_proxy, for now) to the Tomcat.
In the Apache proxy, we do client-authenticated certificate authentication, and
we also have a web agent/module that authenticates the user into a commercial
SSO product. After the user is authenticated, the requests that go to/get
proxied to the Tomcat have some HTTP headers, including a header containing the
userID of the user that got authenticated by the SSO product.
I've been working on Tomcat valve that does "ID assertion", i.e., when the code in my valve sees the HTTP header with the authenticated userID, it "asserts" the user into Tomcat.
Specifically, my valve code calls
org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.setUserPrincipal(getPrincipal(paramRequest)), where
"paramRequest" is the org.apache.catalina.connector.Request object.
When I posted my message, I had just started on my valve code. As I said, I'm
kind of new to Tomcat security, but at that time, I *thought* that after my
valve did the setUserPrincipal(), that the user had to somehow be authenticated
into the Tomcat realm (i.e., that the asserted userID had to actually exist in
the Tomcat realm).
I've since gotten an initial version of my valve code kind of working, but I'm still a little.
I can get the userID from the request header and call the setUserPrincipal() in
the valve code successfully, and from some test JSP pages I use, I can see that
when the JSP calls request.getUserPrincipal(), it appears to return the
asserted user.
The thing that is puzzling me is that, on my test Tomcat, I just have the
default realm (the one that uses tomcat-user.xml for the user base), with only
the default set of dummy users.
And yet, when I test with my valve and the test JSP, it appears that everything
just works, even when the userID that I assert is not in the Tomcat realm!
For example, I guess in the default realm, there's only a comple of users (tomcat, etc.), but if I send a
request into the Tomcat with a header with a userID of "foobar" (and even though there is no user
"foobar" in the Tomcat realm), things seem to work ok, i.e., my JSP displays "foobar" for
request.getUserPrincipal().
Having said all of that, I guess that my question has changed somewhat.
Specifically, now I'm wondering: With what I described above, and with my
valve as described above, does the asserted user NOT have to be in the Tomcat
realm at all?
It's almost like, with Tomcat, when my valve code calls setUserPrincipal(), Tomcat
doesn't "care" whether the user that I'm asserting actually exists or doesn't
exist in the Tomcat realm?
Again, as I said, I'm new, so I may (and probably am) misunderstanding
something about how Tomcat security works...
Sorry for the longish post, but I hope that things are clearer now?
Better a long and clear post, than a short and obscure one.
Two things :
I am not really a Tomcat expert, and this will need to be corroborated by one of them, but
it seems that I remember a not-too-long-ago thread in this same forum, in which it came
out that if there is already a user-id known to Tomcat, it will not even bother to run its
own authentication code. That is said in non-expert terms, but I'm sure someone here will
correct that if need be.
The other thing is that you may be doing a lot of work for nothing.
If you would use either one of the mod_proxy_ajp or the mod_jk Apache module as a
connector to Tomcat, then this connector will automatically pass the authenticated Apache
user to Tomcat with every request, and you would not need your Valve.
Have a look at the TomcatAJP <Connector> description, attribute
"tomcatAuthentication".
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/ajp.html
This being said, make sure that the connection between Apache and Tomcat is reasonably
secure (for example, within the same host or over an internal network), because the AJP
protocol (although in part binary) is not itself encrypted.
No user password is passed over it (only the user-id), but a hacker could in theory
intercept the packets, and replace one user-id by another.
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