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Authentication : Implementation Details

General

Jackrabbit Oak covers different authentication requirements by providing default implementations and extension points for different setup scenarios.

Differences wrt Jackrabbit 2.x

See the corresponding documentation.

Authentication Requirements

Jackrabbit Oak covers the following login requirements and provides dedicated LoginModule implementation(s) for each scenario:

Guest Login

The proper way to obtain an guest session as of Oak is as specified by JSR 283:

String wspName = null;
Session anonymous = repository.login(new GuestCredentials(), wspName);

As of Oak 1.0 Repository#login() and Repository#login(null, wspName) is no longer treated as guest login. This behavior of Jackrabbit-core is violating the specification, which defines that null-login should be used for those cases where the authentication process is handled outside of the repository (see Pre-Authentication).

Similarly, any special treatment that Jackrabbit core applied for the guest (anonymous) user has been omitted altogether from the default LoginModuleImpl. In the default setup the built-in anonymous user will be created without any password. Therefore explicitly uid/pw login using the anonymous userId will no longer work. This behavior is now consistent with the default login of any other user which doesn't have a password set.

GuestLoginModule

The aim of the GuestLoginModule implementation is to provide backwards compatibility with Jackrabbit 2.x with respect to the guest (anonymous) login: the GuestLoginModule can be added as optional entry to the chain of login modules in the JAAS (or corresponding OSGi) configuration.

Example JAAS Configuration:

jackrabbit.oak {
   org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.spi.security.authentication.GuestLoginModule  optional;
   org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.security.authentication.user.LoginModuleImpl required;
};

The behavior of the GuestLoginModule is as follows:

Phase 1: Login

  • tries to retrieve JCR credentials from the [CallbackHandler] using the [CredentialsCallback]
  • in case no credentials could be obtained it pushes a new instance of GuestCredentials to the shared stated and returns true
  • otherwise it returns false

Phase 2: Commit

  • if the phase 1 succeeded it will add the GuestCredentials created above and EveryonePrincipal the Subject in phase 2 of the login process and returns true
  • otherwise it returns false

UserId/Password Login

Oak 1.0 comes with 2 different login module implementations that can handle SimpleCredentials:

LoginModuleImpl

The LoginModuleImpl defines a regular userId/password login and requires a repository setup that supports User Management and is designed to supports the following Credentials:

  • SimpleCredentials
  • GuestCredentials (see above)
  • ImpersonationCredentials (see below)

This login module implementations behaves as follows:

Phase 1: Login

  • if a user does not exist in the repository (i.e. cannot be provided by the user manager) it returns false.
  • if an authorizable with the respective userId exists but is a group or a disabled users, it throws LoginException
  • if a user exists in the repository and the credentials don't match, it throws LoginException
  • if a user exists in the repository and the credentials match, it returns true
    • also, it adds the credentials to the shared state
    • also, it adds the login name to the shared state
    • also, it calculates the principals and adds them to the private state
    • also, it adds the credentials to the private state

Phase 2: Commit

  • if the private state contains the credentials and principals, it adds them (both) to the subject and returns true
  • if the private state does not contain credentials and principals, it clears the state and returns false

User Authentication

The LoginModuleImpl uses a configured Authentication-implementation for performing the login step. Which implementation to use is determined by the UserAuthenticationFactory obtained by the given UserConfiguration. It is expected to provides an Authentication implementation if the given UserConfiguration is accepted.

In case multiple implementations of the UserAuthenticationFactory are available, the precedence depends on its OSGi service ranking property. The default factory implementation has a ranking of 0 (OSGi default). Services with the highest ranking will take precedence.

See also section user management.

Impersonation Login

Another flavor of the Oak authentication implementation is covered by javax.jcr.Session#impersonate(Credentials), which allows to obtain an new Session for a user identified by the specified credentials. As of JSR 333 this method can also be used in order to clone the existing session (i.e. self-impersonation of the user that holds the session.

With Oak 1.0 impersonation is implemented as follows:

  1. Session#impersonate takes any kind of Credentials
  2. the specified credentials are wrapped in a new instance of ImpersonationCredentials along with the current AuthInfo object.
  3. these ImpersonationCredentials are passed to Repository.login

If impersonation succeeds consequently both depends on the authentication setup and on some implementation specific validation that make sure the editing session is allowed to impersonate the user identified by the credentials passed to the impersonate call.

With Oak 1.0 only the default login module (LoginModuleImpl) is able to deal with ImpersonationCredentials and applies the following logic:

  • Self-Impersonation: Any attempt to impersonate the same session will succeed as long as the user is still valid (i.e. exists and has not been disabled).
  • Regular Impersonation: Impersonation another user will only succeed if the impersonated user is valid (i.e. exists and is not disabled) and the user associated with the editing session is allowed to impersonate this user. The latter depends on the User Management implementation specifically on the return value of User.getImpersonation().allows(Subject subject). See User Management : The Default Implementation for details.
ImpersonationCredentials

Since the implementation of Session.impersonate no longer uses SimpleCredentials to transport the original Subject but rather performs the login with dedicated ImpersonationCredentials, impersonation is no longer restricted to SimpleCredentials being passed to Session#impersonate call. Instead, the specified credentials are passed to a new instance of ImpersonationCredentials delegating the evaluation and validation of the specified Credentials to the configured login module(s).

This modification will not affect applications that used JCR API to impersonate a given session. Note however that applications relying on the Jackrabbit implementation and manually creating SimpleCredentials with a SecurityConstants.IMPERSONATOR_ATTRIBUTE, would need to be refactored after migration to Oak.

Impersonation with Custom Authentication Setup

Applications that wish to use a custom authentication setup need to ensure the following steps in order to get JCR impersonation working:

  • Respect ImpersonationCredentials in the authentication setup.
  • Identify the impersonated from ImpersonationCredentials.getBaseCredentials and verify if it can be authenticated.
  • Validate that the editing session is allowed to impersonate: The user associated with the editing session can be identified by the AuthInfo obtained from from ImpersonationCredentials.getImpersonatorInfo().

Token Login

See section Token Authentication for details regarding token based authentication.

TokenLoginModule

The TokenLoginModule is in charge of creating new login tokens and validate repository logins with TokenCredentials. The exact behavior of this login module is described in section Token Authentication.

Pre-Authenticated Login

Oak provides two different mechanisms to create pre-authentication that doesn't involve the repositories internal authentication mechanism for credentials validation.

  • Pre-Authentication combined with Login Module Chain
  • Pre-Authentication without Repository Involvement (aka null login)

See section Pre-Authentication Login for further details and examples.

External Login

While the default setup in Oak is solely relying on repository functionality to ensure proper authentication it quite common to authenticate against different systems (e.g. LDAP). For those setups that wish to combine initial authentication against a third party system with repository functionality, Oak provides a default implementation with extension points:

  • External Authentication: Summary of the external authentication and details about the ExternalLoginModule.
  • User and Group Synchronization: Details regarding user and group synchronization as well as a list of configuration options provided by the the default implementations present with Oak.
  • Identity Management: Further information regarding extenal identity management.
  • LDAP Integration: How to make use of the ExternalLoginModule with the LDAP identity provider implementation. This combination is aimed to replace com.day.crx.security.ldap.LDAPLoginModule, which relies on Jackrabbit internals and will no longer work with Oak.
ExternalLoginModule

The [ExternalLoginModule] is a base implementation that allows easy integration of 3rd party authentication and identity systems, such as LDAP. The general mode of the external login module is to use the external system as authentication source and as a provider for users and groups that may also be synchronized into the repository.

This login module implementation requires an valid SyncHandler and IdentityProvider to be present. The detailed behavior of the ExternalLoginModule is described in section External Authentication.