Hi Bryan, Thanks for the input. Right now, I'm really exploring how better to accommodate migrating from the use of keytabs to our corporate mandate for pkinit support. Observing that the current authorizations in processors (basic auth, kerberos etc) are tightly wired, it suggested to me an opportunity to move security more into an "aspect" of processors rather than woven into the processor specific code. Of course, there are interactions that take place throughout the behavior of the processor.
This is a fairly common approach to security, noting that for any given behavior, it can be done all the same securely or without security. So I would think it should be possible to abstract the authorizations as needed, and there are a variety of patterns to pull those details out of the components needing them. 🙂 I suppose the difference is more subtle these days, but in my mind Authentication does one thing. Decide if principal (e.g.username) is who they say they are, using the provided credentials (e.g. password). Once this is established the authentication service will return an identifying token, cert etc. That's it. Now, some services will inline this activity along with authorization. For us, this is already handled and the identity is established as a digitally signed X.509 certificate. Thus, our primary need is to consult our security services which will decide if that principal is allowed to do something - such as use HDFSProcessor, Query Solr, etc. In looking at the current code in the processors (and I haven't studied them all but will look more closely at HDFS), it didn't seem like a good approach to layer another authorization (PKInit) into that existing code and it will certainly get crowded in processors doing that, which should focus on processing. Just my opinions so far! Subject to change. Darren ________________________________ From: Bryan Bende <bbe...@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 3:22 PM To: users@nifi.apache.org <users@nifi.apache.org> Subject: Re: Authorization Framework Darren, I also thought you were talking about authentication. Processors don’t really perform authorization, they provide credentials to some system which is authentication, the system then decides if they authenticated successfully, and then some systems may also perform authorization to determine if the authenticated identity is allowed to perform the action. The examples you gave of basic auth and kerberos are both authentication mechanisms. I think it will be very hard to not have this logic embedded in processors since many times it is specific to the client library being used. For example, HDFS processors use the UserGroupInformation class from hadoop-common for kerberos authentication where as Kafka processors use the Kafka client which takes a JAAS config string. The parts that can be factored out are usually common things like credential holders, such as SSLContextService or KeytabCredentialService, both of which don’t really do anything besides hold values that are then used in different ways by various processors. If we are missing what you are talking about, let us know. Thanks, Bryan On Nov 4, 2020, at 2:45 PM, Darren Govoni <dar...@ontrenet.com<mailto:dar...@ontrenet.com>> wrote: Thanks Joe. Just looking to see where community might be going down the road with respect to processor security so we can keep our efforts aligned. In regards to your question I primarily mean authorization. Our company already has a SSO that establishes identity credentials so these are then used to authorize specific functions and access to certain infrastructure systems when constructing flows. Darren Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36> ________________________________ From: Joe Witt <joe.w...@gmail.com<mailto:joe.w...@gmail.com>> Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 12:29:35 PM To: users@nifi.apache.org<mailto:users@nifi.apache.org> <users@nifi.apache.org<mailto:users@nifi.apache.org>> Subject: Re: Authorization Framework Darren You will want this thread on dev list to get traction. Also please clarify if you mean authorization or whether you mean authentication. I read all usages as meaning to discuss authentication. thanks On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 9:53 AM Darren Govoni <dar...@ontrenet.com<mailto:dar...@ontrenet.com>> wrote: Greetings! We have an internal need to move to a specific PK based authorization for all our nifi processors. Currently, authorizations such as basic auth and kerberos seem to be wired directly inside the processors. My design approach to addressing our need also seeks to factor authorization out of processors where specific authorization handlers can be composed and config/run time and lighten the responsibilities inside processor classes. Towards this end, my initial design goals for this framework are thus: 1) Allow various kinds of authorization handlers to be written and added to processors without necessarily recoding the processor. 2) Allow for a pipeline effect where one or more authorizers might need to operate at the same time. 3) Do not disrupt existing processors that rely on their internal coding for authorization 4) Use appropriate design patterns to allow for flexible implementations of principals, credentials and other authorization assets. 5) Secure any clear text assets (usernames and passwords) in existing authorizations when moving them inside the framework. How does the community conduct initial design reviews of such changes? We would be quite a ways from contributing anything back but want to keep in sync with community practices and expectations to make such an offering immediately useful. Regards, Darren
