[keycloak-user] Data filtering in SQL

Wed Nov 7 17:44:46 EST 2018

Hi Rob,

On Tue, 2018-11-06 at 16:28 +0000, Byrd, Rob M wrote:
> (Hope this is the correct way to reply - let me know if not)
> 
> Thanks.  So my concern is really with the whole idea that an Enterprise Application's security constraints could really be all implemented based on url-patterns, is that what you guys are thinking?

Cannot speak for Keycloak guys, but will put in my 2¢ as an architect - URL-based (or rather resource-based) authorization covers only one aspect of the application security. Data filtering is equally important, but it's just another facet of the problem, and needs to be solved accordingly.
Indeed, Keycloak doesn't provide OOTB any means for automatically limiting subsets of data shown to the user, as Keycloak has a completely different scope (namely Web SSO/IDM solution).

However, you can still use Keycloak as a central warehouse for your security (meta)data, and use it the way you want. Like I said before, nothing stops you from defining some policies in Keycloak, then retrieving them and converting to a WHERE clause for your SQL/JPQL/NoSQL query.

Speaking of NoSQL - this might be not directly relevant to your problem, but still interesting. A similar problem has surfaced in the discussion following my talk on Apache Sling + Keycloak [1] earlier this year; the central point was: "okay, we can have Keycloak path-based authorization in Sling, but how do we limit the content visible to the user?"
That time we came up with some sort of hybrid solution, like path-based security + JCR ACLs and/or application-level rules; but now I think this might be something similar, like generating JCR's equivalent to the WHERE clause based on Keycloak policy definition.

Just to make sure I understand the case, let's imagine:
- there are users and groups (live in Keycloak);
- there are, say, "projects" (live in business tier + DB);
- there is a policy in Keycloak saying "projects should be accessible only to the members of the respective groups";
- based on that:
 - GET /projects/<project> should return 200 + representation if the user is a member of the group, 403 otherwise;
 - GET /projects should return the list of projects the current user has access to.

Is this correct?

[1] https://adapt.to/2018/en/schedule/modern-authentication-in-sling-with-openid-connect-and-keycloak.html

Cheers,
Dmitry Telegin
CTO, Acutus s.r.o.
Keycloak Consulting and Training

Pod lipami street 339/52, 130 00 Prague 3, Czech Republic
+42 (022) 888-30-71
E-mail: info at acutus.pro

> 
> For example, mostly a user can visit most features (urls) in an application, but it is the subset of things they can see/do within the feature that is the crux of the security issue - and it does not seem feasible to architect urls in such a way that they can be used as the key to security.  Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Rob Byrd
> DST
> Solutions Lead
> SS&C Technologies Inc.   |   1055 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64105
> t: (816) 435-7286  | m (816) 509-0119
> rmbyrd at dstsystems.com  |  www.ssctech.com
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> 
> -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dmitry Telegin [mailto:dt at acutus.pro] 
> Sent: Friday, November 2, 2018 12:22 AM
> > To: Byrd, Rob M <rmbyrd at dstsystems.com>; keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
> Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Data filtering in SQL
> 
> Hello Rob,
> 
> If I get it right, it's all about generating SQL WHERE clause from Keycloak policies? I think this is doable, as Keycloak has a well-defined object model for authorization policies, and it's easy to obtain policy definitions in JSON format. I think Pedro Igor will tell you more about that.
> 
> You should pay attention to the following:
> - there are differences in semantics between OPA and Keycloak policies. For example, Keycloak policies do not operate HTTP methods but rather use more generic notion of scopes;
> - not every policy type can be easily converted to a WHERE clause. It should be trivial for User/Group/Role policies, but is virtually impossible for Script and Rules, as they are just blackboxes that evaluate to true or false. Unless of course your DBMS has a built-in JavaScript engine :)
> 
> Good luck!
> Dmitry Telegin
> CTO, Acutus s.r.o.
> Keycloak Consulting and Training
> 
> Pod lipami street 339/52, 130 00 Prague 3, Czech Republic
> +42 (022) 888-30-71
> E-mail: info at acutus.pro
> 
> On Thu, 2018-11-01 at 21:39 +0000, Byrd, Rob M wrote:
> > I am comparing OPA authorization to Keycloak - how could I enforce Keycloak policy in the SQL closest to the data for good performance, including returning subsets of lists?  OPA discusses this at https://blog.openpolicyagent.org/write-policy-in-opa-enforce-policy-in-sql-d9d24db93bf4.
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Rob Byrd
> > DST
> > Solutions Lead
> > SS&C Technologies Inc.   |   1055 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64105
> > t: (816) 435-7286  | m (816) 509-0119
> > rmbyrd at dstsystems.com<mailto:rmbyrd at dstsystems.com>  |  www.ssctech.com<http://www.ssctech.com/>;;
> > > > Follow us: [cid:image001.png at 01D412C1.A14C5770] <https://www.linkedin.com/company/ss-c-technologies/>  |  [cid:image002.png at 01D412C1.A14C5770] <https://twitter.com/ssctechnologies>  |  [cid:image003.png at 01D412C1.A14C5770] <https://www.facebook.com/ssctechnologies/>
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