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Jetty/Tutorial/JAAS
Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Details
- 3 Examining the JAASLoginService
- 3.1 Implementing the RoleCheckPolicy
- 3.2 CallbackHandler
- 3.3 Role Principal Implementation Class
- 3.4 Sample Login Modules
- 3.5 Understanding Passwords/Credentials
- 3.6 JDBCLoginModule
- 3.7 DataSourceLoginModule
- 3.8 PropertyFileLoginModule
- 3.9 LdapLoginModule
- 3.10 Writing Your Own LoginModule
- 3.11 Example JAAS WebApp
- 4 Other Goodies
Introduction
Using JAAS with Jetty is a matter of
#Configuring a JAASLoginService
#Declaring an org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService
#Creating a JAAS login module configuration file
#Specifying theJAAS login module configuration file on the Jetty run line
Details
The following sections explain how to accomplish these tasks
Configuring a JAASLoginService
Configure a Jetty org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService to match the <realm-name> in your web.xml file. For example, if the web.xml contains a realm called "xyzrealm":
<login-config> <auth-method>FORM</auth-method> <realm-name>xyzrealm</realm-name> <form-login-config> <form-login-page>/login/login</form-login-page> <form-error-page>/login/error</form-error-page> </form-login-config> </login-config>
Declaring an org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService
Next declare the following JAASLoginService in a Jetty configuration file:
<Call name="addBean"> <Arg> <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService"> <Set name="Name">Test JAAS Realm</Set> <Set name="LoginModuleName">xyz</Set> </New> </Arg> </Call>
Alternatively of course, you can set this up in a context xml file that configures a web app:
<Set name="securityHandler"> <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.security.ConstraintSecurityHandler"> <Set name="loginService"> <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService"> <Set name="name">Test JAAS Realm</Set> <Set name="loginModuleName">xyz</Set> </New> </Set> </New> </Set>
Creating a JAAS login module configuration file
Set up your LoginModule in a configuration file, following the syntax rules:
xyz { com.acme.SomeLoginModule required debug=true; };
Specifying theJAAS login module configuration file on the Jetty run line
Invoke jetty with the jaas configuration file you created in step 2:
> java -Djava.security.auth.login.config=mylogin.conf -jar start.jar etc/myjetty.xml
Examining the JAASLoginService
To allow the greatest degree of flexibility in using JAAS with web applications, the JAASLoginService supports a couple of configuration options. Note that you don't ordinarily need to set these explicitly, as Jetty has defaults which will work in 99% of cases. However, should you need to, you can configure:
- a policy for role-based authorization (Default: org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.StrictRoleCheckPolicy)
- a CallbackHandler (Default: org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.callback.DefaultCallbackHandler)
- a list of classnames for the Principal implementation that equate to a user role (Default: org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASRole)
Here's an example of setting each of these (to their default values):
<New class="org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASLoginService"> <Set name="Name">xyzrealm</Set> <Set name="LoginModuleName">xyz</Set> <Set name="RoleCheckPolicy"> <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.StrictRoleCheckPolicy"/> </Set> <Set name="CallbackHandlerClass"> org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.callback.DefaultCallbackHandler </Set> <Set name="roleClassNames"> <Array type="java.lang.String"> <Item>org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASRole</Item> </Array> </Set> </New>
Implementing the RoleCheckPolicy
The RoleCheckPolicy must be an implementation of the org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.RoleCheckPolicy interface and its purpose is to help answer the question "is User X in Role Y" for role-based authorization requests. The default implementation distributed with jetty is the org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.StrictRoleCheckPolicy, which will assess a user as having a particular role iff that role is at the top of the stack of roles that have been temporarily pushed onto the user or if the user has no temporarily assigned roles, the role is amongst those configured for the user.
Roles can be temporarily assigned to a user programmatically by using the pushRole(String rolename) method of the org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASUserPrincipal class.
For the majority of webapps, the default StrictRoleCheckPolicy will be quite adequate, however you may provide your own implementation and set it on your JAASLoginService instance.
CallbackHandler
A CallbackHandler is responsible for interfacing with the user to obtain usernames and credentials to be authenticated.
Jetty ships with the org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.DefaultCallbackHandler which interfaces the information contained in the request to the Callbacks that are requested by LoginModules. You can replace this default with your own implementation if you have specific requirements not covered by the default.
Role Principal Implementation Class
When LoginModules authenticate a user, they usually also gather all of the roles that a user has and place them inside the JAAS Subject. As LoginModules are free to use their own implementation of the JAAS Principal to put into the Subject, jetty needs to know which Principals represent the user and which represent his/her roles when performing authorization checks on <security-constraint>s. The example LoginModules that ship with jetty all use the org.mortbay.jetty.plus.jaas.JAASRole class. However, if you have plugged in some other LoginModules, you must configure the classnames of their role Principal implementations.
Sample Login Modules
At the time of writing, Jetty provides four sample LoginModule implementations:
- org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.JDBCLoginModule
- org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule
- org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.DataSourceLoginModule
- org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.ldap.LdapLoginModule
We'll take a look at all of these, but first, a word about password handling in Jetty, as it applies to all LoginModules.
Understanding Passwords/Credentials
Passwords can be stored in clear text, obfuscated or checksummed. The class org.eclipse.jetty.http.security.Password should be used to generate all varieties of passwords,the output from which can be cut and pasted into property files or entered into database tables.
> java -cp lib/jetty.jar org.eclipse.jetty.http.security.Password Usage - java org.eclipse.jetty.http.security.Password [<user>] <password> > java -cp lib/jetty.jar org.eclipse.jetty.http.security.Password me you you OBF:20771x1b206z MD5:639bae9ac6b3e1a84cebb7b403297b79 CRYPT:me/ks90E221EY
Read more on securing passwords.
JDBCLoginModule
The JDBCLoginModule stores user passwords and roles in a database that are accessed via JDBC calls. You can configure the JDBC connection information, as well as the names of the table and columns storing the username and credential, and the name of the table and columns storing the roles.
Here is an example login module configuration file entry for it using an HSQLDB driver:
jdbc { org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.JDBCLoginModule required debug="true" dbUrl="jdbc:hsqldb:." dbUserName="sa" dbDriver="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" userTable="myusers" userField="myuser" credentialField="mypassword" userRoleTable="myuserroles" userRoleUserField="myuser" userRoleRoleField="myrole"; };
There is no particular schema required for the database tables storing the authentication and role information. The properties userTable, userField, credentialField, userRoleTable, userRoleUserField, userRoleRoleField configure the names of the tables and the columns within them that are used to format the following queries:
SELECT <credentialField> FROM <userTable> WHERE <userField> =? SELECT <userRoleRoleField> FROM <userRoleTable> WHERE <userRoleUserField> =?
Credential and role information is lazily read from the database when a previously unauthenticated user requests authentication. Note that this information is only cached for the length of the authenticated session. When the user logs out or the session expires, the information is flushed from memory.
Note that passwords can be stored in the database in plain text or encoded formats, using the Jetty password utility.
DataSourceLoginModule
Similar to the JDBCLoginModule, but this LoginModule uses a DataSource to connect to the database instead of a jdbc driver. The DataSource is obtained by doing a jndi lookup on java:comp/env/$\{dnJNDIName\}
Here is a sample login module configuration for it:
ds { org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.DataSourceLoginModule required debug="true" dbJNDIName="ds" userTable="myusers" userField="myuser" credentialField="mypassword" userRoleTable="myuserroles" userRoleUserField="myuser" userRoleRoleField="myrole"; };
PropertyFileLoginModule
With this login module implementation, the authentication and role information is read from a property file.
props { org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule required debug="true" file="/somewhere/somefile.props"; };
The file parameter is the location of a properties file of the same format as the etc/realm.properties example file. The format is:
<username>: <password>[,<rolename> ...]
Here's an example:
fred: OBF:1xmk1w261u9r1w1c1xmq,user,admin harry: changeme,user,developer tom: MD5:164c88b302622e17050af52c89945d44,user dick: CRYPT:adpexzg3FUZAk,admin
The contents of the file are fully read in and cached in memory the first time a user requests authentication.
LdapLoginModule
Note that the LdapLoginModule ships in a separate jar, in $JETTY-HOME/lib/ext/jetty-ldap-jaas.jar. It requires JDK1.5 or above.
ldaploginmodule { org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.LdapLoginModule required debug="true" contextFactory="com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory" hostname="ldap.example.com" port="389" bindDn="cn=Directory Manager" bindPassword="directory" authenticationMethod="simple" forceBindingLogin="false" userBaseDn="ou=people,dc=alcatel" userRdnAttribute="uid" userIdAttribute="uid" userPasswordAttribute="userPassword" userObjectClass="inetOrgPerson" roleBaseDn="ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com" roleNameAttribute="cn" roleMemberAttribute="uniqueMember" roleObjectClass="groupOfUniqueNames"; };
Writing Your Own LoginModule
If you want to implement your own custom LoginModule, there are two classes to be familiar with:
AbstractLoginModule.java package org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi; public abstract class AbstractLoginModule implements LoginModule { ... public abstract UserInfo getUserInfo (String username) throws Exception; }
UserInfo.java package org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi; public class UserInfo { public UserInfo (String userName, Credential credential, List roleNames) { ... } public String getUserName() { ... } public List getRoleNames () { ... } public boolean checkCredential (Object suppliedCredential) { ... } }
The org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.AbstractLoginModule implements all of the javax.security.auth.spi.LoginModule methods. All you need to do is to implement the getUserInfo method to return a org.eclipse.jetty.plus.jaas.UserInfo instance which encapsulates the username, password and role names (note: as java.lang.Strings) for a user.
The AbstractLoginModule does not support any caching, so if you want to cache UserInfo (e.g. as does the org.mortbay.jetty.plus.jaas.spi.PropertyFileLoginModule) then you must provide this yourself.
Example JAAS WebApp
There is an example of authentication and web authorization in the jetty distribution in examples/test-jaas-webapp. It uses the PropertyFileLoginModule to perform authentication based on a simple properties file. To use it with the jetty maven plugin:
> cd examples/test-jaas-webapp > mvn jetty:run
Alternatively, to use it instead with jetty standalone:
> cd examples/test-jaas-webapp > mvn clean install > cd ../../ > java -jar start.jar etc/jetty.xml etc/jetty-jaas.xml
Then surf to http://localhost:8080/test-jaas/index.html
Other Goodies
RequestParameterCallback
As all servlet containers intercept and process a form submission with action j_security_check, it is usually not possible to insert any extra input fields onto a login form with which to perform authentication: you may only pass j_username and j_password. For those rare occasions when this is not good enough, and you require more information from the user in order to authenticate them, you can use the JAAS callback handler org.mortbay.jetty.plus.jaas.callback.RequestParameterCallback. This callback handler gives you access to all parameters that were passed in the form submission. To use it, in the login() method of your custom login module, add the RequestParameterCallback to the list of callback handlers the login module uses, tell it which params you are interested in, and then get the value of the parameter back. Here's an example:
FooLoginModule.java public class FooLoginModule extends AbstractLoginModule { . . . public boolean login() throws LoginException { . . . Callback[] callbacks = new Callback[3]; callbacks[0] = new NameCallback(); callbacks[1] = new ObjectCallback(); //as an example, look for a param named "extrainfo" in the request //use one RequestParameterCallback() instance for each param you want to access callbacks[2] = new RequestParameterCallback (); ((RequestParameterCallback)callbacks[2]).setParameterName ("extrainfo"); . . . callbackHandler.handle(callbacks); String userName = ((NameCallback)callbacks[0]).getName(); Object pwd = ((ObjectCallback)callbacks[1]).getObject(); List paramValues = ((RequestParameterCallback)callbacks[2]).getParameterValues(); //use the userName, pwd and the value(s) of the parameter named "extrainfo" to //authenticate the user . . . }