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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10956?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15194993#comment-15194993
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Stefan Podkowinski commented on CASSANDRA-10956:
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I’d assume that authentication should be handled by providing a IAuthenticator
implementation, but I can see how this is not a good fit here as we can’t
provide any SASL support.
I also like about the your approach that it can be used on top of regular
authentication, e.g. by falling back to password based authentication if no
certificate has been provided.
Two small remarks regards {{cassandra.yaml}}:
bq. Client supplied certificates must be present in the configured truststore
when using this authentication
I first read this that each client certificate must be present in the
truststore. Maybe explicitly mention importing a common CA in the truststore
works as well.
bq. NOT_REQUIRED : no attempt is made to obtain user identity from the cert
chain.
The reason for presenting this option in the yaml config is not really clear to
me. It’s contrary to the idea of using the certificate authenticator.
> Enable authentication of native protocol users via client certificates
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: CASSANDRA-10956
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10956
> Project: Cassandra
> Issue Type: New Feature
> Reporter: Samuel Klock
> Assignee: Samuel Klock
> Attachments: 10956.patch
>
>
> Currently, the native protocol only supports user authentication via SASL.
> While this is adequate for many use cases, it may be superfluous in scenarios
> where clients are required to present an SSL certificate to connect to the
> server. If the certificate presented by a client is sufficient by itself to
> specify a user, then an additional (series of) authentication step(s) via
> SASL merely add overhead. Worse, for uses wherein it's desirable to obtain
> the identity from the client's certificate, it's necessary to implement a
> custom SASL mechanism to do so, which increases the effort required to
> maintain both client and server and which also duplicates functionality
> already provided via SSL/TLS.
> Cassandra should provide a means of using certificates for user
> authentication in the native protocol without any effort above configuring
> SSL on the client and server. Here's a possible strategy:
> * Add a new authenticator interface that returns {{AuthenticatedUser}}
> objects based on the certificate chain presented by the client.
> * If this interface is in use, the user is authenticated immediately after
> the server receives the {{STARTUP}} message. It then responds with a
> {{READY}} message.
> * Otherwise, the existing flow of control is used (i.e., if the authenticator
> requires authentication, then an {{AUTHENTICATE}} message is sent to the
> client).
> One advantage of this strategy is that it is backwards-compatible with
> existing schemes; current users of SASL/{{IAuthenticator}} are not impacted.
> Moreover, it can function as a drop-in replacement for SASL schemes without
> requiring code changes (or even config changes) on the client side.
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