[undertow-dev] Undertow Security: PicketBox5

[Stuart Douglas]

Anil Saldhana wrote:
> I just want to convey that I am not trying to shove PicketBox into
> Undertow. Comments inline.
>
> On 11/14/2012 06:06 AM, Darran Lofthouse wrote:
>> Within Undertow we already have an authentication framework coming
>> together based on the requirements identified for the project - at this
>> stage we support SPNEGO, HTTP Basic with HTTP Digest now being close to
>> completion - with HTTP Digest we are supporting all capabilities from
>> RFC2069, RFC2617 and RFC5843.
>>
>> A couple of comments from a very quick review of the mechanisms you have
>> within PicketBox: -
>> - The implementation assumes that it is running within a servlet
>> container, Undertow is a highly performant HTTP server that may or may
>> not contain a servlet container.
> The tests I showed you were for servlet security implementation. Those
> definitely require the presence of a servlet container.
>
> We did implement a generic authentication scheme whose tests are here:
> https://github.com/picketbox/picketbox/tree/master/core/src/test/java/org/picketbox/test/authentication
>
>
>> - Today HTTP Digest is one of the most complex mechanisms out there,
>> to me this is almost the definitive mechanism - prove we can support all
>> capabilities in all three RFCs and we are in a good position for
>> mechanisms not even in existence to be usable with undertow.
>> Unfortunately the PicketBox version does still seem to be tied to
>> RFC2069 with an assumption it is in a servlet container - even then some
>> of the basic RFC2069 capabilities are not implemented.
> Don't always focus on what an implementation cannot do to justify
> cooking it yourself. :) :)
> What we did with HTTP/Digest is put in an implementation that is on par
> with what Tomcat and Jetty provided
> and looking for feedback from people to proceed.
>
> We aim PicketBox5 to work with all web containers and in a JavaSE
> environment because it is a generic security framework.
> So we should be fine even if Undertow internal architecture does not
> include it. I am just exploring if there is
> possibility of PicketBox5 making into Undertow, to save you guys coding
> time. :)

  From what I have seen it looks like the best approach at the moment 
will be to keep the actual authentication mechanisms in Undertow, while 
delegating everything else to PicketLink/PicketBox via a SPI. This way 
we have all the HTTP specific stuff in Undertow.

There are a number of problems with just using a servlet based solution, 
the main one being that this limits us to servlet use cases, so we would 
have to re-implement this anyway to support the domain http server.

Even for our servlet implementation using filters is not ideal. At the 
moment we have a mode where if no filters are configured static 
resources can be served directly from memory using non-blocking IO, 
without ever delegating to a thread pool. If we had to add a blanket 
security filter then this would no longer be possible.

The undertow architecture also gives us quite a lot of flexibility in 
terms of how this is all implemented, a lot of which we loose if we go 
to a pure servlet based approach. For example using pure Undertow 
handlers you could potentially apply a blanket authentication scheme to 
the whole server, which is not really possible with a pure servlet 
implementation.

Another advantage of pure Undertow handlers is that they give you more 
flexibility in controlling how the request is actually written out.

For example with RFC2617 integrity protection the Authentication-Info 
header may need to be placed after the end of a HTTP request in the 
trailing headers section, if chunked encoding is being used. 
Unfortunately the serlvet API does not really have any way of setting 
trailing headers, so the only way to implement this is to buffer the 
whole response and then calculate the hash used in Authentication-Info.


Stuart

>
>> - The second key feature that will prove the approach is correct is
>> the use of multiple mechanisms concurrently, presently Undertow works
>> with SPNEGO combined with either Basic or Digest authentication - once
>> complete it will work with this pair plus Client Cert AND FORM
>> authentication - we should even have the capability to implement a
>> custom FORM implementation with some of the DIGEST capabilities.
> This is not rocket science. This could have been achieved previously
> with custom tomcat authenticators.
> But Tomcat is not the subject of discussion here. I understand the
> intent of combined authentication schemes.
> We did make an attempt at an combined generic authentication scheme in
> PicketBox5. But don't shoot it down
> without even looking at it. ;)
>
>> Longer term I also believe we need the set of mechanisms to live
>> together and potentially co-located with the SASL mechanisms as there is
>> a potential to share between these.
> Also I suggest getting Bill Burke involved in discussions because he has
> a lot of use cases from RESTEasy
> security perspective that he was greatly hampered by the Tomcat
> architecture. I am sure he will bring in some
> use cases that Undertow security may benefit.
>> Regards,
>> Darran Lofthouse.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/14/2012 06:49 AM, Stuart Douglas wrote:
>>> Anil Saldhana wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>> I was not aware of this mailing list until today.
>>>>
>>>> 3-4 months ago, we rewrote PicketBox5 to be a generic security
>>>> framework.
>>>> https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/SECURITY/Java+Application+Security
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/picketbox/picketbox
>>>>
>>>> We neither have JAAS stuff nor Servlet Security
>>>> (FORM,DIGEST,CLIENT-CERT,BASIC) tied to Tomcat Authenticators.
>>>> I am wondering if there is a scope for using PicketBox5 with Undertow.
>>>> Also there is no tie in into any containers in
>>>> PicketBox5.
>>>>
>>>> The test cases that you may want to review:
>>>> https://github.com/picketbox/picketbox/tree/master/http/src/test/java/org/picketbox/test/authentication/http
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Maybe Stefan from our side can help out. I would guess we can
>>>> produce a
>>>> prototype branch with undertow + PBox5.
>>> I have had a look through this today, and the big problem with using
>>> this for Undertow is that it is based on the Servlet API's. We want to
>>> be able to use Undertow as the domain HTTP server as well, and we
>>> really
>>> need to be able to re-use the security without adding a servlet
>>> dependency into the AS core.
>>>
>>> I will go through this more fully tomorrow, as I am still recovering
>>> from my 24 hour flight, but it looks like there are also other things
>>> that this may not support such as multiple authentication mechanisms
>>> and
>>> optional authentication.
>>>
>>> I'm not ruling out using PicketBox, however at this stage I think that
>>> the best approach is probably to have the HTTP authentication
>>> mechanisms
>>> in Undertow, where they can make use of the async IO features as
>>> much as
>>> possible, and just provide a very simple SPI that we can then back with
>>> PicketBox in order to keep Undertow core free of external dependencies.
>>>
>>> Stuart
>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Anil
>>>>
>>>> PS: Feedback from *Jason Greene*: I'll let Stuart and Darran comment,
>>>> but my thinking is that we want to greatly limit the dependencies of
>>>> standalone undertow. Integration in AS is a different story though. I
>>>> would imagine this means some kind of SPI between undertow and the
>>>> container.
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