Author: jawi
Date: Wed May 2 15:18:45 2012
New Revision: 1333075
URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=1333075&view=rev
Log:
Added article on client certificates.
Added:
ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext
(with props)
Modified:
ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/index.mdtext
Modified: ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/index.mdtext
URL:
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/index.mdtext?rev=1333075&r1=1333074&r2=1333075&view=diff
==============================================================================
--- ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/index.mdtext (original)
+++ ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/index.mdtext Wed May 2 15:18:45 2012
@@ -1,11 +1,13 @@
Title: Design
## Articles/how to's
+
* [Customizing Deployment Strategies](ace-deployment-strategies.html)
* [Configuring ACE authentication](ace-authentication.html)
+* [Using client certificates authentication](using-client-certificates.html)
## Miscellaneous
* [Remote Interfaces](remote-interfaces.html)
* [Test Script](test-script.html)
-* [Audit Log Protocol](auditlog-protocol.html)
\ No newline at end of file
+* [Audit Log Protocol](auditlog-protocol.html)
Added: ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext
URL:
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext?rev=1333075&view=auto
==============================================================================
--- ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext
(added)
+++ ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext Wed
May 2 15:18:45 2012
@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+Title: Using client certificate authentication
+
+_Using two-way SSL as authentication mechanism in ACE_
+
+Revision 0.9, last updated: May 2nd, 2012.
+
+[TOC]
+
+## Introduction
+
+One-way SSL authentication is used to let a client verify the identity of the
server it is communicating with. The server itself does not verify the identity
of the client. In two-way SSL authentication, a client first verifies the
identity of the server after which the server identifies the client. This way,
the identity of both the client and server can be established allowing a trust
relation can be created.
+This article describes how to configure the ACE server and the management
agent(s) in such way that they use two-way SSL authentication. The remainder of
this article assumes the reader has basic knowledge of the principles behind
ACE, and has basic knowledge about creating and using certificates. For this
article, the latest code of ACE (0.8.1-SNAPSHOT, rev.1332609) was used.
+
+
+## Outline
+
+As described in detail in [1], there are multiple communication paths that can
(and need) to be secured. For two-way SSL authentication, several scenarios can
be identified:
+
+1. only the communication between management agent and ACE server is secured
by means of two-way SSL. This implies that there is only a trust relation
between management agent and ACE server, but the other clients that make use of
the ACE server have no trust relation (i.e., they still communicate by means of
one-way SSL or might not even use SSL at all);
+2. all the communication paths for the ACE server are secured by means of
two-way SSL. This means that not only a trust relation exists between
management agent and ACE server, but also between, for example, the web-UI and
the ACE server or the REST-API and the ACE server[^1].
+
+In conclusion, we need to configure the trust relation between management
agent and the ACE server, and, optionally, the trust relation between ACE
server and other components.
+
+
+## Configuring two-way SSL authentication
+
+For two-way SSL authentication, you need two (or more) certificates. These can
be issued either by an official external certificate authority (CA), or by
means of a self-signed CA[^2].
+The details on how to create a self-signed CA and certificates is well
documented on many places on the Internet, and therefore goes beyond this
article. Let's assume we've got the following:
+
+* a self-signed CA whose certificate is added to a Java keystore file, called
<tt>truststore</tt>. This file will be used as *truststore* for both the
management agent and the ACE server[^3];
+* a certificate (signed by our self-signed CA) for the management agent,
available in a Java keystore file, called <tt>keystore-ma</tt>;
+* a certificate (signed by our self-signed CA) for the ACE server, available
in a Java keystore file, called <tt>keystore-server</tt>.
+
+For the management agent, we need to add some system properties in order to
let Java find and use the correct truststore and keystore (see also [2]):
+
+ :::sh
+ [localhost:/]$ java \
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/path/to/truststore \
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=secret \
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/path/to/keystore-ma \
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=secret \
+ -jar org.apache.ace.launcher-0.8.1-SNAPSHOT.jar \
+ discovery=https://10.0.1.16:8443 \
+ identification=MyTarget
+
+*Note to double check the paths to both files, as there will not be printed
any error in case one of them points to an incorrect file!*
+
+For the ACE server, the configuration is provided by means of a property-file
called <tt>platform.properties</tt>. Similar as the management agent, we should
add some additional properties to it:
+
+ :::properties
+ -Dorg.osgi.service.http.port.secure=8443
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.enable=true
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.truststore=/path/to/truststore
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.truststore.password=secret
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.keystore=/path/to/keystore-server
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.keystore.password=secret
+ -Dorg.apache.felix.https.clientcertificate=needs
+
+This will not only ensure that the Jetty container inside ACE will obtain the
correct keystore and truststore and start a listener on port <tt>8443</tt>, but
also mandates that all clients **must** provide a certificate upon connecting
(as denoted by the last property). Without this, client that do not offer a
client certificate will simply be accepted as well, hence resulting in only
one-way SSL authentication.
+
+In order to secure all internal communication paths as well, we need to
specify some additional properties in <tt>platform.properties</tt>:
+
+ :::properties
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/path/to/keystore-server
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=secret
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/path/to/truststore
+ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=secret
+
+This will ensure that all created HTTPS connections will use the mentioned
keystore and truststore.
+Note that in order to let **all** communication to use HTTPS, you need to
modify the configuration files of ACE (as found in the <tt>conf</tt> directory)
to mention this, for example, the <tt>org.apache.ace.webui.vaadin.cfg</tt> file
would look like:
+
+ :::properties
+ # The endpoint of the Vaadin UI
+ org.apache.ace.server.servlet.endpoint = /ace
+ # Vaadin UI settings
+ ui.authentication.enabled = true
+ #ui.authentication.user.name = d
+ #ui.authentication.user.password = f
+ # ACE MS settings
+ ace.host = https://10.0.1.16:8443/
+ # OBR settings
+ obr.url = https://10.0.1.16:8443/obr/
+
+Alternatively, one could also provide a keystore with a *different*
certificate for securing the internal communication as well. The only thing
needed is to change the <tt>javax.net.ssl.keyStore</tt> property to let it
point to another keystore file.
+
+
+### Using multiple different keystores
+
+So far, we only used the "standard" Java functionality to secure the
communication paths with two-way SSL authentication. While this works for most
use cases, one can think of more sophisticated scenario's in which multiple
trust relations between different hosts have to be created. For example, when
the OBR of ACE runs on a different host, secured with its own certificate. In
order to support this use case, we can leverage the authentication framework of
ACE by providing it configurations for all URLs that need their own keystore
and/or truststore. In our OBR example, we could supply the following
configuration to the <tt>ConnectionFactory</tt>:
+
+ :::properties
+ authentication.baseURL = https://10.0.1.17:8443/obr/
+ authentication.type = client_cert
+ # optional: use a specific keystore for this URL
+ authentication.keystore.file = /path/to/obr-keystore
+ authentication.keystore.storepass = secret
+ # optional: use a specific truststore for this URL
+ authentication.truststore.file = /path/to/obr-truststore
+ authentication.truststore.storepass = secret
+
+Different configurations can be supplied for different URLs, allowing many
different trust relations to be established.
+
+Be sure that in order to let ACE correctly map certificates to users, you need
to install the <tt>ClientCertAuthenticationProcessor</tt> as additional
authentication processor!
+
+
+## FAQ
+
+How should I name the certificates?
+: One should use the hostname of the calling side as common name (CN) of the
certificate's distinguished name (DN), for example, <tt>CN=localhost</tt> or
<tt>CN=10.0.1.16</tt>;
+
+How should I name the users that are authenticated through certificates?
+: The user should have the same name as the common name of the certificate,
for example, <tt>localhost</tt> or <tt>10.0.1.16</tt>;
+
+I've enabled two-way SSL authentication, but it doesn't work!
+: There can be many reasons for this, like, can the truststore and keystore
files be loaded (*no warnings or errors will be printed for this!*), or, is the
name of the certificate matching the name of the host, or � In general, if
it doesn't work, one should enable SSL-debugging in Java by adding
<tt>-Djavax.net.debug=ssl</tt> as system property. This will print *lots* of
information about the keystore and truststore, the communication itself as well
as detailed error messages. Also, the authentication parts in ACE provide lots
of debugging information, logged at <tt>DEBUG</tt> level.
+
+
+## References
+
+1. Developer documentation on [ACE
Authentication](/dev-doc/design/ace-authentication.html);
+2. [JSSE Reference Guide for JDK
5.0](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/security/jsse/JSSERefGuide.html#Customization);
+
+
+## Notes
+
+[^1]: One can argue whether this is strictly necessary for **all** internal
communication paths, as we will see later on, one can configure which paths use
two-way SSL authentication and which paths do not.
+
+[^2]: Using a self-signed CA for two-way SSL authentication is not that much
of a problem as one needs to make the certificate of the client available to
the server, and the other way around. When both certificates are signed by the
same CA, and both sides also trust this self-signed CA, the trust relation
between client and server can be established as well.
+
+[^3]: Based on the certificate in the truststore, each side will be able to
validate the certificate of the other side.
Propchange:
ace/site/trunk/content/dev-doc/design/using-client-certificates.mdtext
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