---- "André Warnier" <a...@ice-sa.com> wrote: > oh...@cox.net wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I'm new here, and hope that someone can help. > > > > I was wondering if any of the LDAP-type realms (e.g., JNDIRealm, etc.) > > support an authentication mode where no password or credentials are > > required? In other words, where just a userID/username is presented, and > > if that userID/username is present in the LDAP, then the user gets > > authenticated? > > > > You have to be VERY specific here about what you mean, because this is a very > delicate area. > > If you mean : "does there exist any way by which Tomcat can authenticate a > user, without > forcing this user to go through a login dialog with userid and password ?" > then the answer is : yes, several (*). But the applicability of each depends > very much on > the exact circumstances. > > If you mean : "does there exist any /standard/ authentication mechanism in > Tomcat whereby, > /with/ a login dialog, the user could be authenticated without providing a > password, > although the authentication back-end (e.g. LDAP) has a non-empty password > registered for > that user ?" > then the answer is no, definitely. Because such a mechanism would be a HUGE > security > hole, so it is certainly not provided as any standard authentication > framework. > (which does not mean that you could not invent your own mechanism). > > Also, when you are mentioning LDAP, do you really mean the standard LDAP > (which is just > basically a database, and is not per se an "authentication mechanism"), or do > you mean > "Windows domain authentication, backed up by an Active Directory server" ? > Or something else ? > > There is so much variation possible here, that it may be better to describe > what you want > to achieve really, rather than asking questions about this or that mechanism > right away. > > > (*) for example, look here : > http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/windows-auth-howto.html > http://waffle.codeplex.com/ > http://www.ioplex.com/jespa.html >
Hi Andre, Sorry. I should have been clearer in my explanation and my question, so let me try again. Our configuration has an Apache in front of the Tomcat, with the Apache reverse-proxying (using mod_proxy, for now) to the Tomcat. In the Apache proxy, we do client-authenticated certificate authentication, and we also have a web agent/module that authenticates the user into a commercial SSO product. After the user is authenticated, the requests that go to/get proxied to the Tomcat have some HTTP headers, including a header containing the userID of the user that got authenticated by the SSO product. I've been working on Tomcat valve that does "ID assertion", i.e., when the code in my valve sees the HTTP header with the authenticated userID, it "asserts" the user into Tomcat. Specifically, my valve code calls org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.setUserPrincipal(getPrincipal(paramRequest)), where "paramRequest" is the org.apache.catalina.connector.Request object. When I posted my message, I had just started on my valve code. As I said, I'm kind of new to Tomcat security, but at that time, I *thought* that after my valve did the setUserPrincipal(), that the user had to somehow be authenticated into the Tomcat realm (i.e., that the asserted userID had to actually exist in the Tomcat realm). I've since gotten an initial version of my valve code kind of working, but I'm still a little. I can get the userID from the request header and call the setUserPrincipal() in the valve code successfully, and from some test JSP pages I use, I can see that when the JSP calls request.getUserPrincipal(), it appears to return the asserted user. The thing that is puzzling me is that, on my test Tomcat, I just have the default realm (the one that uses tomcat-user.xml for the user base), with only the default set of dummy users. And yet, when I test with my valve and the test JSP, it appears that everything just works, even when the userID that I assert is not in the Tomcat realm! For example, I guess in the default realm, there's only a comple of users (tomcat, etc.), but if I send a request into the Tomcat with a header with a userID of "foobar" (and even though there is no user "foobar" in the Tomcat realm), things seem to work ok, i.e., my JSP displays "foobar" for request.getUserPrincipal(). Having said all of that, I guess that my question has changed somewhat. Specifically, now I'm wondering: With what I described above, and with my valve as described above, does the asserted user NOT have to be in the Tomcat realm at all? It's almost like, with Tomcat, when my valve code calls setUserPrincipal(), Tomcat doesn't "care" whether the user that I'm asserting actually exists or doesn't exist in the Tomcat realm? Again, as I said, I'm new, so I may (and probably am) misunderstanding something about how Tomcat security works... Sorry for the longish post, but I hope that things are clearer now? Thanks, Jim --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
