Alan,
If it is the intention that the Subject is populated with a Principal for each role (aka group) obtained from the LoginModule/SecurityRealm at login time, then I can see how this will work. What is confusing is that this doesn't seem to be implemented in the code so far (at least I couldn't see where the roles were populated into the Subject in the SQL and FileProperties LoginModules).
Do you really think it is essential to have a principal<->role mapping in the geronimo-web.xml? Could it be possible to just create a Principal for each of the security-role-ref/role-link and security-role/role-names to which the WebRoleRefPermissions are assigned?
cheers,
Jan
PS Just one more slight confusion - the SecurityRealms have methods getUserPrincipals() and getGroupPrincipals() that actually return collections of Strings not Principals - do you think maybe they should be renamed to getUserPrincipalNames() and getGroupPrincipalNames() instead?
Isn't that what group principals are for?
Regards,
Alan
-----Original Message----- From: Jan Bartel Sent: Fri 11/28/2003 3:45 PM To: Alan D. Cabrera Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [security] Authentication mechanism
Alan,
There's two points I'd like to raise about the proposed
mechanism.
I think this mechanism is not dynamic enough. In the real world,
users
are dynamically granted and revoked roles at runtime. With the
proposed
mechanism I can't see any way to accomodate that - the whole
webapp
would have to be stopped and restarted if just one user was
granted a
role on the fly and wanted to exercise it.
Also, it is impractical to fully enumerate all of the principals
and
their role mappings in a deployment descriptor - many
applications in
the corporate world contain thousands of users with many
different roles
each.
The information about users and their roles is maintained by the
Security Realm. We just need a mechanism whereby when the user
is
authenticated, we are able to pull out their roles from the
Security
Realm, convert them into Permissions and associate them with the
Subject. I'll have a bit more of a think and see if I can come
up with a
firm mechanism proposal.
cheers,
Jan
Alan D. Cabrera wrote:
> The Geronimo deployment descriptor will have an additional
security
> statement:
> > 3) a mapping of principals to roles.
> > So when the commit statement occurs, WebRoleRefPermission
(servletname,
> role), will be added to a principal's Permissions collection.
When a
> servlet calls the method isUserInRole(role) on a HttpRequest,
the
> ContextManager will grab the current Ssubject's context and do
a
> permission check; remember that this context was created, and
registered
> in the Geronimo login wrapper, using that Subject and so, its
registered
> ProtectionDomain contains the set of Principals that belong to
that
> Subject. I think you know what happens after that, a call
through the
> Java security architecture which calls the implies() of the
registered
> Policy, which gets the registered Policy configuration, which
checks the
> permission.
> > > Regards,
> Alan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Bartel
> Sent: Thu 11/27/2003 3:30 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: [security] Authentication mechanism
> > >
> Hi Alan,
> > The web.xml file contains security statements that
> 1) define some role name mappings (role-name/role-link)
> 2) define which roles are permitted to access resources
> > These then get translated into Permissions by the
> PolicyConfigurationWeb.commit() when the web.xml is
deployed.
> Fine so far.
> > Now, when a servlet calls the method isUserInRole(role)
on a
> HttpRequest
> we need to determine whether the call is executing on
behalf of
> an
> (authenticated) user who is able to act in the role
specified.
> Pre-JACC,
> this has been accomplished by matching the role argument
against
> the set
> of roles associated with the user which were retrieved
by the
> LoginModule when the user logged in.
> > With JACC, it looks like the impl of the isUserInRole
(role) has
> to
> concoct a WebRoleRefPermission (servletname, role) and
for the
> security
> infrastructure to check if that permission has been
granted to
> the user
> (Subject). So, how does the security infrastructure
perform that
> check?
> How does it determine if user X can act in the role Y?
Doesn't
> it
> require some piece of code to convert a user's roles
into
> WebRoleRefPermissions and associate them with the user's
> Subject?
> > Hope that clarifies my confusion a bit :-)
> > thanks
> Jan
> > Alan D. Cabrera wrote:
> > All the roles and permissions are in the web.xml.
What do you
> mean by
> > the dynamic
> > granting of roles to users?
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Alan
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jan Bartel
> > Sent: Thu 11/27/2003 3:51 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Cc:
> > Subject: Re: [security] Authentication mechanism
> > > > > >
> > Just to add to my list of questions ...
> > > > How does the current mechanism implemented in
> > o.a.g.security.PolicyConfigurationWeb.commit()
cope with
> the
> > dynamic
> > granting of roles to users? Looks like it is all
set in
> concrete
> > at the
> > time of the commit(), or are the roles and
permissions
> concerned
> > those
> > described in the web.xml?
> > > > thanks again
> > Jan
> > > > > > > > Jan Bartel wrote:
> > > I'm just taking a look at integrating the web
tier
> security
> > with
> > > Geronimo security. I've got a couple of
questions:
> > >
> > > 1. When/who should call setMBeanServer on the
> > > GeronimoLoginConfiguration? Should I call
it
> > > just before doing a LoginContext login()
call?
> > >
> > >
> > > 2. What code is responsible for configuring
the
> SecurityRealm
> > > instances? Should they be configurable
from the
> > > security-service.xml file?
> > >
> > > 3. I still can't work out where the mapping
of the
> user's
> > roles
> > > that are retrieved by the SecurityRealm
are turned
> into
> > permissions
> > > suitable for a HttpRequest.isUserInRole()
call
> impl?
> > >
> > > Any pointers on any of these would be welcome.
> > >
> > > thanks
> > > Jan
> > > > > > > >
> > > >
