Dynamic Authentication and Authorization Mechanism - jsf

I am developing a web application consisting of different domains. I have tried to implement hierarchical RBAC for authorization. Each domain has some predefined operations in their bo implementations. The following is my bo package hierarchy.
com.mycompany.bo
...domain1
...domain2
.
...domainN
...rbac
I predefine the following role hierachy at first deployment, i don't want to maintain the rbac operations after the first deployment, i mean the domain rbac operations should be self maintainable by the domain admins.
Root
Domain1Admin Domain2Admin .. DomainNAdmin
The root role can authorize on all operations under bo implementations and also each domain admin can authorize on its all own operations and some rbac operations like create user, edit user, create role etc also.
Finally, I have developed the ui part of the project abiding by the facelet facilities, like include tag so that i can distinguish the ui fragments of a page. As a result, I can render a ui fragment with respect to whether the the user authorized to view the fragment or not. Any suggestion for the authorization design of the system will greatly be helpful.
Now, I came to authentication part of the project. In this system a user does not only authenticate over internally but also should authenticate over an external system via a web service or ldap, since the user may have been already created in there.
Spring framework provides some facilities authentication via ldap(statically configurable in xml). In my case, I want to add remove edit new LDAP definitions in runtime and can change a user authentication method(may be selecting the new LDAP from a combobox). How can I dynamically add new LDAP definitions in Spring, shall I continue with spring security or implement this feature own my own?

Related

Suggestion required on how to implement a better permission system

I have a user permission system in place where i have a set of permissions within the database, for example
id
Permission
1
POST:CreateBooking
2
GET:AllBookings
And i have another table (junction table) where i put dependent permissions such as
if i want to create a Booking, i need to fetch Package details and so POST:CreateBooking requires the user to also have GET:AllPackages permission.
There's a template system in place as well, where the users can group multiple permissions together and once that template is assigned to any employee, that employee will get THAT set of permissions and it's dependent permissions.
What my nodejs system does is that when user logs in, it fetches all permissions from DB and puts it in a redis set from where on each request, the permission is checked against user id.
Is there any tool from where i can do exactly this but in an intuitive and better way?
I tried keycloak but i don't know how to cover my needs mentioned above.
Thank you
if I'm understanding correctly and trying to generify your scenario, you have a classical situation where:
You have groups which can have multiple permissions assigned;
groups can be created dinamically;
each permission correspond to a specific functionality.
So, implementing the OIDC (Open Id Connect) protocol might fit you needs. As you suggested youself you might be interested in a OpenID provider (do not reinvent the wheel) keycloak is good, you can give a look also to Vault Hashicorp.
So assuming that your backend have an already existing framework to handle security and permissions (eg. Spring Security) you can produce JWT token with the OpenId provider and check throught PreAuthorize claims (permissions) inside the token.
At the end your security layer it's just an annotation you need to insert before your method controller or before you class controller.
Behind the scenes, instead, this is what will happen:
Your user connect to your app;
User insert username and password -> the Open Id provider gives you a JWT
Your Front End app everytime it make a REST req will send also the JWT
The back end controller method called it's under authorization
Given the public keys of the OpenId provider, the validity of the token it's enstablished
If the specific permission claim it's found inside the token, the request can be elaborated else a 403 Forbidden it's returned.
OIDC - as the conceptual model/backdrop to any tool of choice, is certainly a popular/good choice, but as long as you're willing to deal with an element of complexity - the understanding required to implement an OIDC arrangement (- think of it as a possible investment - effort up front with hopefully the rewards tricking-in over time); e.g. OIDC is an ideal choice for supporting SSO (Single Sign On), especially when it comes to supporting/allowing for authentication/login via providers such as Facebook, LinkedIn & Google, etc (- as well as more Corporate OPs (OIDC Providers) including AAD/Azure AD).
Try to first step-back, and consider the possible bigger/future picture, before selecting a tool based upon only your starting/current requirements.

What CDSSO implementation best resolves Disparate User database

What Cross-Domain Single Sign-On implementation best solves my problem?
I have two domains (xy.com & yz.com) which already have their own database of users and are already implementing their user authentications separately. Recently there has been the need to implement CDSSO so that users dont have to log in each time they try to access resources from both domains.
Ideally the CDSSO implementation I hope to use should allow custom implementation of authentication, as I hope to call API's provided by both domains during authentication to confirm a user exists in at least one of the domains user database.
I've been looking at Sun's OpenSSO which seems to provide a means to extend its AMLoginModule class yet this seems to be a long thing and more annoyingly they seem to stick to GlassFish.
I've also considered developing a custom CDSSO to solve our needs. Is this advisable?
Is this achievable using Suns OpenSSO considering the disparate user database as I there will be no need to make use of the User db that OpenSSO requires?
Are there any simpler means of achieving what I intend to achieve?
In addition both applications which exist on the two domains were developed using PHP. How does this have an effect considering Suns OpenSSO is based on Java EE?
Are there any clearly specified steps on implementing OpenSSO and or any other SSO implementations from start to finish?
I suggest you to use simpleSAMLphp in order to deploy an Identity Provider and 2 Service Provider (for each app).
SimpleSAMLphp allows you to select multiple authentication source and is not hard to build your own authsource that consults the 2 databases.
My experience in SAML says that the fact of not consolidating the Identity of the user in 1 unique authsource is a bad idea due several reasons:
* identity conflicts: what happen if you have the same user registered with different mail (if that is the field yoy use to identify the user) and you try to access? You could be logged in different account each time.
* what happen if you add a 3rd service, do you gonna add a 3rd database
* what happen if user change its data in one app, the other gonna be no synched?
* what happen if user uses different passwords?
I recommend you to execute a migration process before adding the SAML support and build a unique database for all your identities and unify the registration/edit profile/password recovery process of both sites in one.
SimpleSAMLphp has good documentation, but I can provide to you any documentation related to the process that I suggested.

What is ASP.NET Identity?

What are the basic functionality which it provides?
Specifically for the person who has never used asp.net built in stuff.
The MSDN tutorial is confusing me a lot. Claims, OWIN,etc are going above my head.
What I can make out of all this is - The Identity framework helps me to manage my application plus social logins. It handles my cookie,etc.
What if I have just one role in my application - just the plain user?
Should I go for the Identity then or I should implement my own custom thing?
Any help is appreciated.
If you are starting from scratch, build a sample MVC project with individual membership option, which will create the following components for you:
Login module that creates and manages authentication cookies
Simple database to store basic user data (credentials, name)
EF code to interact with the database
This will most likely meet your use case for a user without roles and attributes.
OWIN really has nothing to do with authentication, it is a new spec for building web apps. The login module happens to be implemented according to this spec and it sounds cool, so Microsoft likes to throw this term around a lot.
If you are not planning to have authorization logic in the app, then you don't need to worry about Claims. Claims is another term for user attributes (login, name, roles, permissions). The Claims collection will be populated by the framework, but you most likely won't use it. If you need just the user id/name, the old ASP.NET interfaces are still there to get this data.
As far as implementing your own, I've seen people here ditching the database and EF code, especially if they already have an existing user store. You just need to implement a credential verification logic against your store. You don't want to build your own cookie management, though. Use the login module provided by Microsoft or well established third party systems (SiteMinder, Tivoli, etc.)
Looks at this open source project for a good alternative to ASP.NET Identity.
This is a very well put together tutorial that explains many of these concepts, you can get a free trial to the site to see it.

Securing a Symfony2 application

i'm developing a Symfony2 app which involves users with hierarchical roles. Right now i can register, recover and login into the application without issues as i've implemented roles and users as described in Symfony2 docs.
At that point, i've developed some CRUD's in order to be able to manage objects in the application but in the current implementation i must check current user roles in order to let him or not run "selected" actions. I mean, in each controller i get security context, then user object and check permissions then sometimes i need to check the current user is the owner of the data - i.e if an user has clients i need to check url passed variables/id/whatever are owned/belongs the current user - and then deny access or not.
So, as far i'm used to and feeling comfortable developing the application as mentioned above i'm wondering is there is a better approach or a Symfony2 approach where i can manage roles and data in standard or more understanding way so future developers doesn't need to go through each if or check inside controllers+actions. I also would like to note i would be able to customize how data or objects are fetched or loaded so i can optimize sql's run in background.
Symfony ACLs is exactly what you need. You can assign access rights (i.e. OWNER, EDIT, VIEW etc) to a single user or assign to all users with a certain role (or both).
If ACL is too complex for your needs, than an alternative approach would be to use a custom Security Voter.

Separating storage of site users from admin users in Orchard

I'm just getting started with a website based on Orchard and have a question related to user accounts and authentication.
There will be site administrators/editors of various kinds responsible for updating the site with content. For these types of users the built-in role and user management in Orchard is a perfect fit. Regular site users, however, must be stored in an external legacy system, should never have access to the site dashboard and should not be visible under the "Users" tab in the dashboard even to administrators (they are managed completely by the external system).
What would be the proper way to implement this in Orchard?
Implement your own membership provider. You can take examples from the gallery that are doing authentication, such as oAuth or AD modules.

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