I am creating a java application to implement SSO (SAML) using ADFS. I am not sure if SAML can be done using ADFS alone. While installing ADFS, I noticed that it required configurations of relying party and claim providers trusts (which are basically the SP and IP, right?). I am confused as to whether to have SP and IP in the java application, or just leave it to the ADFS to handle.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Your Java application needs a SAML stack and becomes the SP.
Refer: SAML : SAML connectivity / toolkit for some ideas if you don't have one.
ADFS (which handles SAML 2.0) can then function as the IDP.
You will also have to configure the claims in ADFS - which correspond to the SAML assertions.
Your Java application will be a Service Provider (SP) that receives identity from an Identity Provider (IdP) server. In the use case you have outlined, ADFS will be the IdP Server. within your application you will need to integrate a library (e.g. SAML stack) to process the SAML assertion. SAML requires configuration on both sides of the interface. There are a few open source options such as OpenSAML. Depending on your organization, you may want to look at a vendor provided solution as well for long term support.
Related
I am evaluating different protocols and software packages for my SSO project and I was thinking about the pros and cons of making an SSO system with SAML and one with something like CAS or Shibboleth. I couldn't really find any reason why I should choose SAML over Shibboleth or CAS since these two SSO solutions not only support SAML, but also many more functions that I otherwise have to implement.
Any ideas?
The important thing that Shibboleth offers is that it has 2 servers, SP (Service Provider) and IDP (Identity Provider). The SP server communicate with any IDP sever over the network, simply and only with configurations you can get an SSO working perfectly and it respects the SAML norms.
For example, you have a site that can be authenticated from multiple companies credentials, each company has it's own identity system, you don't have to deal with how they connect to their systems (CAS, shibboleth idp ...) but only how to protect your data using SAML2, this is done by sharing metadatas over this federation.
I've just configured Shibboleth IdP3.2 with my web application that authenticates the users against an LDAP server at the backend.
I could test this authentication process at the local machine. But, while deploying the code on CI server, I realized that the authentication process could not be completed successfully.
The reason behind this failure is that the Service Provider (SP) cannot access the (IdP). From our initial investigation, We chose SAML as the authentication protocol over other protocols like CAS because it did not need a back channel communication. As long as the user has access to both SP and IdP,the authentication process would still work.(SP and IdP need not interact with each other)
On testing we found that the attribute resolution is successful, but the subsequent artifact resolution is failing. In artifact resolution, IdP directly contacts the SP and expects a response. SP cannot send a response to IdP as it is inaccessible. Hence, the authentication fails. (Tomcat logs show: unknownHostException)
Some SAML flows in Web Browser SSO do not require direct communication between SP and IdP as seen from flow diagram in this link.
Does Shibboleth IdP make provisions for such implementations? Is there a work around for implementing Shibboleth IdP without any back channel communication?
SOLUTION:
As Stefan mentioned, there are alternative bindings like HTTP-Redirect and HTTP-POST that do not use back channel communication. You can read more about these bindings here
I changed the SP metadata to make HTTP-POST as the default binding, referring this link.
I did not have to make any changes to Shibboleth IdP configuration as these alternative bindings were already being supported, as substantiated by the metadata file.
According to this documentation, you can set the outgoingBindings attribute to set the preferred binding to use.
I would also recommend removing the HTTP-Artifact binding from the SP metadata.
I installed PingFederate on an AWS EC2 running Windows_Server-2008-R2_SP1-English-64Bit-Base-2014.04.09. I have a Java application that is using Spring Security for authentication.
I have read about how with PingFederate, I can set up an Identity Provider(IdP) and a Service Provider(SP). I have gathered that the IdP would be the Application User providing login credentials(the Identity) and passing this to the SP which has the Target Application apart of the SP in this diagram on this page here:
http://documentation.pingidentity.com/display/PF66/Service+Providers+and+Identity+Providers
This image also shows the Federated Identity Software on both sides of the IdP and the SP.
I have created an IdP and SP with my local PingFederate server just to see what the configuration options are and I am confused on which parts of this I actually need to be able to have a SSO for my Spring Security application.
My questions are:
Do I need an IdP and SP to implement that I am trying to do.
Right now our usernames and passwords are stored in a SQL Server, would I leverage this for PingFederate to use to authenticate the users?
Should I even be using Spring Security SAML for this or would another route be more appropriate?
Thanks for any help, I have reached out to PingFederate but my Regional Solutions Architect happens to be out until Friday.
I also apologize if I am completely off in my thinking, I am trying to wrap my mind around what is needed.
Presuming your goal is to establish federation between Ping and your application (in order to e.g. externalize authentication or enable single sign-on), your thinking is correct.
The Ping Federate serves as an Identity Provider (IDP) and you can configure it to connect to your SQL server, so that it can authenticate your existing users from there. IDP communicates with other applications which are called Service Providers (SP).
In order to connect to Ping your application therefore needs to be able to act as a SAML 2.0 Service Provider and using Spring SAML is a very good way to enable it to do so.
The typical flow of data between SP and IDP for single sign-on is similar to:
User accesses SP application which requires authentication
SP creates an AuthenticationRequest and sends it to IDP (using redirect in user's browser)
IDP processes the request and authenticates the user
IDP responds back to SP with an AuthenticationResponse message
SP processes the response and creates a session for the user based on the included data
There is an assumption being made that you need SAML between your Spring app and PingFederate. That is not true depending on how it is deployed and if you (see Andy K follow-up questions). You should check out the OpenToken Integration Kit for Java or perhaps the ReferenceID Int Kit from Ping as a possible solution. Much simpler to integrate than trying to hack together another SAML solution that may not be needed. However, I would recommend talking to your RSA who can give you the best approach for your scenario.
I have a requirement for cross domain sso. So, i chose OpenAM with SAML. I have two applications hosted in different servers and host for which i need to implement SSO.
Now i read about OpenAM with SAML but could get the core idea about the setup. LDAP is used as user data store.
Now i have something in mind and want to verify if it meets my requirement.
Since i have two applications(AppA and AppB) in need of SSO implementation. I need two OpenAM configured as service provider? and should be deployed in different tomcat containers? Should the each service providers be deployed in AppA and AppB?
I need another separate tomcat container for identity provider OpenAM?
The sp should be registered to idp and idp should be registered to sp within same Circle of trust?
Do i have to do anything else? Again do i have to configure separate LDAP for each idp and sp ? Anyway, what can be the ideal setup in my case?
You need one IdP, your apps have to implement the SP. If your apps are Java based you could leverage OpenAM's Fedlet or use Spring Security SAML extension (works like a charm).
There's also a PHP SAML SP and even an Apache http server SAML module ...
Or you could use OpenIG as a reverse-proxy (but it's a java web app) which also implements a SAML SP.
-Bernhard
One more possible solution in which you can use OpenAM out of the box is by using OpenAM identity federation:
Use the standard OpenAM Identity federation setup (with IDP and SP) as explained in this post: http://fczaja.blogspot.com/2012/06/idp-initiated-sso-and-identity.html
You will need to have an IDP for AppA and SP for AppB or vice versa. IDP will be connected to your user store.
On SP side create a dummy user store using something like OpenDS.
Import all the users from IDP to SP (using a scheduled daily batch job)
Implement auto federation based on one or more of the user attributes.
Use OpenAM authorization features on SP side to give access to SP side App
UPDATE:
I was able to get ADFS to forward my user to the relying party application. I used ComponentSpace's SAML2.0 library and RelayState. Even though it successfully forwards to the WIF application, it doesn't recognize my user as having been authenticated. It instead initiates a SP-initiated SSO scenario by redirecting to the IDP STS. I'm not too sure how I should proceed.
Original Message:
I have configured a single-sign-on setup in the following manner:
IDP - A portal website that posts SAML2 responses to my SP.
SP - ADFS 2.0 configured with a claims provider trust configured as a SAML2.0 endpoint (with my IDP of course)
RP Application - An ASP.NET application which is configured as a Relying Party trust in ADFS (WS-Fed).
When I log into my IDP and click on the link that posts the SAML2 token to ADFS, everything works fine. I am taken to the IdpInitiatedSignOn.aspx page and am told that I have been logged in. The problem is that where I would normally expect to see a drop down list of applications to choose from (which should only include my single RP Application) I see nothing. I only have two buttons allowing me to sign out of all applications or a single application. Is there some trick to configuring the RP Application trust that I'm not aware of? It was my understanding that ADFS 2.0 would accept this configuration of SAML2 and WS-Fed. (See http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2012/09/27/ad-fs-2-0-relaystate.aspx under "When can I use RelayState?")
I would greatly appreciate any advice on this.
IdpInitiatedSignOn shows the list of RP's that support SAML.
Your RP is WS-Fed so won't appear in the list. In your case, the path is:
RP -> WS-Fed -> ADFS (Home Realm Discovery) -> SAML -> IDP -> Authenticate.