[keycloak-dev] per-client authentication flows

[Marek Posolda]

On 19/01/18 14:21, Bill Burke wrote:
> That's "step-up" authentication right?  Or is acr something different.
> Yeah, I think per-client flow could be an alternative way to implement
> it.  Don't know if its a better way, but it is an alternative.
Yes, it is about step-up authentication. I hope this can indirectly help 
with per-client flows, but not 100% sure.

One possible issue with different "acr" values for different 
authentication flows is the fact, that with the step-up authentication 
you may not want to repeat some authenticators, which were already 
successful for this userSession.

For example you have flow1 with password-only and flow2 with 
password+OTP.  When application is already authenticated with level1 
(username+pasword), but now wants level2, you don't want to type 
password again if you already authenticated through password before. So 
authentication flow should ask just for OTP in this case. But 
executionId of usernamePassword authenticator will be different in both 
authentication flows.

However maybe this can be addressed with the "amr" claim, which can be 
saved in IDToken (This is per OIDC specs 
http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html#IDToken) and maybe 
also userSession. It contains the String representations of used 
authentication methods. Hopefully we can use this to track that 
username+password authenticator was already used in this userSession in 
different authentication flow and hence skip the usernamePassword 
authenticator when moving from level1 to level2.

>
> BTW, different topic, one thing I'm worried about though is, are auth
> flows now dependent on cookies?  We may have to optionally allow query
> params to specify the auth session rather than a cookie.  For
> non-browser grants, we'll have logins spanning multiple requests
> (think SPNEGO/Kerberos) and they may not support cookies.
Yes, I see. Someone already asked on keycloak-user mailing list about 
the alternative of using query parameter instead of the cookie. I think 
it was similar usecase like Openshift. Authorization code OIDC flow was 
needed in some non-browser authentication scenario.

Marek
>
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 1:08 AM, Marek Posolda <mposolda at redhat.com> wrote:
>> I wonder if it's related to support for OIDC "acr" parameter (authentication
>> levels)? I can imagine that we map different values of "acr" parameter to
>> different authentication flows.
>>
>> Then in adapter configuration keycloak.json, you can use something like
>> "default_acr" . If it's set, client adapter will send initial OIDC request
>> with this "acr" value and hence will use specific authentication flow
>> corresponding to that "acr" .
>>
>> This has an advantage, that single client can possibly use different
>> authentication flows. As client will have possibility to override
>> default_acr based on the usecase. For example bank application can require
>> just simple username+password login to see the account details, but may
>> require stronger authentication level (OTP) for further actions like sending
>> payment to different account.
>>
>> Marek
>>
>>
>> On 18/01/18 17:33, Bill Burke wrote:
>>> Makes sense for both direct grant and browser flow.  Please reread the
>>> OP.   I'll try to summarize differently.  In Keycoak, using OAuth
>>> authorization code grant protocol means that the 'Browser Flow" will
>>> be invoked.  *All* OSIN clients use the code grant and clients are
>>> configured individually whether a challenge based protocol should be
>>> used or not.  It is a Keycloak requirement to remain backward
>>> compatible so Keycloak can just be turned on with no changes.  What it
>>> boils down to is cmd-line clients vs. browser clients.   I would hate
>>> to add an architectural feature just to implement something OSIN
>>> specific, but I think this would be useful beyond OSIN.  I'm thinking
>>> of a purely text-based authenticaiton flow for cmd line clients.
>>> Something I've been thinking about since this summer. Originally I was
>>> thinking that we'd have to trigger a flow based on the OIDC 'display'
>>> parameter, but now I'm thinking that per-client-flows is a more
>>> elegant solution.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 10:44 AM, Stian Thorgersen <sthorger at redhat.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Definitively makes sense for the 'Direct Grant Flow'.
>>>>
>>>> Did you also think about it for the 'Browser Flow'? That doesn't make
>>>> sense
>>>> to me as I don't think the client should have any control on the SSO
>>>> flow.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 17 January 2018 at 20:37, Bill Burke <bburke at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>> TLDR;  Per client authentication flows?  Client can be configured to
>>>>> override realm authentication flows.
>>>>>
>>>>> Background:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm specing out how we will replace OSIN (openshift oauth server) with
>>>>> Keycloak.  One issue is that each oauth client in OSIN can specify the
>>>>> authentication flow they want.  Non-browser clients like the 'oc' cmd
>>>>> line tool want a 401, challenge-based protocol...Web console,
>>>>> obviously wants HTML.  They All OSIN clients use the OAuth
>>>>> auth-code-grant irregardless if they are non-brwoser or browser
>>>>> clients.  Keycloak assumes this oauth grant type is browser based and
>>>>> expects non-browser clients to use Resource Credentials grant or
>>>>> client credential grant.  OSIN does not support this and we (keycloak)
>>>>> have to be backward compatible.
>>>>>
>>>>> Solution:
>>>>>
>>>>> I think it would be pretty simple to add the ability to override
>>>>> authentication flows per client.  I don't think this would be a
>>>>> one-off for OSIN as we could use it to implement other non-browser
>>>>> input protocols.  For example, I wanted to be able to have a
>>>>> text-based auth flow for command line logins.  I think this could be a
>>>>> way to implement that.
>>>>> --
>>>>> Bill Burke
>>>>> Red Hat
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> keycloak-dev mailing list
>>>>> keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-dev
>>>>
>>>
>
>