The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Web-Based Access Control for ITS Web Services, Present and Future Jeffrey C. D’Angelo, Programmer/Analyst, Enabling Technologies Group James A. Vuccolo, Manager, Software Solutions Group Applied Information Technologies (AIT) in Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET), a unit of Information Technology Services (ITS)

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Topics Access Control Concepts, Methods and Technology Restricting Access on ITS Web Services Role Based Tools New and changing services

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Access Control Concepts Identification and Authentication (AuthN) Authorization (AuthZ) Roles and Groups

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Access Control Methods File Permissions –all or nothing? –Special cases: Portal, share.pass, WebMail Database restrictions (SQL GRANT) Web server control /.htaccess Roles and Groups

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Access Control Technology - AuthN HTTP Basic auth –.htpasswd –mod_auth_kerb / mod_auth_dce / mod_auth_external CGI form / Cookies –Penn State WebAccess / CoSignPenn State WebAccess –Custom database enabled application Less used –Client certificates –Kerberos browser support

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Access Control Technology - AuthZ File Permission Control –ACL Explorer (on –PASS Shares (“File Sharing” button of the PASS Explorer)PASS Explorer Web Permission Control:.htaccess –Restrict Access to COLA (on –Dynamic Web application based (CGI, PHP, etc) Groups: User Managed Groups (DCE, LDAP) –Course groups –Implicit UMGs

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 ACLs and UMGs Explicit UMGs must be told what to do –To restrict file access by explicit UMG, the UMG must be added to the ACLs. File users can be specified in ACLs or UMGs –Which is better for you? Web users can be specified in.htaccess or UMGs –However, UMGs need mm_mod_auth_ldap (with patch)mm_mod_auth_ldap –Alternatives: mod_auth_ldap, mod_authz_ldapmod_auth_ldapmod_authz_ldap Demonstration

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Manage Web Editors (Implicit UMGs) Departmental Web Space ( –umg/services. – Course Online Accounts ( –umg/services. – Student Orgs Web Space ( –umg/clubs.campusname.clubname –

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 ACL Problems to Avoid mask_obj problems –Secure FTP setting / SMB share settingSecure FTP setting –Removing in ACL explorer Removing desired permissions by recursion –User home & www, share –Departmental space and group folders Removing user_obj the wrong way

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Roles What is a role? Example Case Studies WebRAT

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 What is a role? Roles are groups of people with attributes

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Example dn: cn=wfg.046.notify,dc=psu,dc=edu member: psdiridn=375704,dc=psu,dc=edu dn: psdiridn=375705,dc=psu,dc=edu psmnemonics=wfg.046.notify:0:TLT psaccountnumbers=wfg.046.notify:0:ALL psfundtype=wfg.046.notify:0:ALL psdollarthreshold=wfg.046.notify:0:NoLimit Group Entry

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Case Studies Penn State WorkFlow Departmental Identity

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Penn State WorkFlow Problem –Needed a solution to control authorization to various financial applications within the Penn State WorkFlow system Solution –Use roles to group financial people together and specify access restrictions via attributes

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Departmental Identity Problem –How do you represent information about a person who has multiple affiliations? i.e. A staff member at UP who teaches at Penn State Altoona Solution –Use a role to represent the additional affiliations

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 WebRAT Web-based Role Authorization Tool (A.K.A “The RAT”) Allows authorized personnel to assign roles Uses role as template to determine what attributes to assign Demonstration

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 protected.personal.psu.edu Problem –The web server, is open to the world. It does not have a mechanism by which an average user can control access to his/her content. Technically inclined users can set.htaccess file based password protection. However, they cannot authenticate Access/FPS accounts on Solution – is a future service that will solve this problemhttps://protected.personal.psu.edu/ –Access can be controlled using any combination of Access and FPS Accounts, groups and roles

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Access Control Manager A prototype of a Web-based tool that will be used to control access to content that is hosted on Demonstration

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Directory Authorization Control mm_mod_auth_ldap example PHP example – Demonstration

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 ITS Web Service Changes facelifthttp:// Install mm_mod_auth_ldap on more servers –E.g. PASS Migration –ACL Explorer redo – may have a protected versionhttp://blogs.psu.edu/ Demonstration

The Pennsylvania State University © 2007 Resources Apply for Web space –Individual: –Course: –Departmental: –Student Org: Apply for User Managed Group (explicit) – Regular: Apply for Services > “Create a User Managed Group for Personal or Departmental space” Course group: Manage Services > “Create a User Managed Group for a Course” Authentication / Authorization control basics –Set UMG in ACLs: –Basic password protect: –WebAccess for Web dev: