[keycloak-dev] Certificate subject DN is provider dependent

[Lösch, Sebastian]

The main point on this issue in my opinion is to have a reliable, provider independent DN representation.
This is not given using the currently used Java API X509Certificate.getSubjectDN() and X509Certificate.getIssuerDN(). 
The JavaDoc states here the result is "[...]an implementation specific Principal object, which should not be relied upon by portable code."
So I think providing an alternative is necessary.

I am wondering if this canonical config switch ON/OFF is the right way. It has no effect on all other user identity source, e.g. serial number.
Wouldn't it be better to implement two alternatives "Match canonical IssuerDN using regular expression" and "Match canonical SubjectDN using regular expression"?
The existing solutions are kept for backward compatibility but deprecated in the documentation?

Best regards,
Sebastian

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: keycloak-dev-bounces at lists.jboss.org <keycloak-dev-
> bounces at lists.jboss.org> Im Auftrag von Pedro Igor Silva
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 13. Februar 2019 00:03
> An: John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>
> Cc: keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
> Betreff: Re: [keycloak-dev] Certificate subject DN is provider dependent
> 
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 8:17 PM John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 2/12/19 4:26 PM, Pedro Igor Silva wrote:
> > > Sure, but note that RFC-4514 relies on 4519 (which actually defines
> > > the supported attributed types).
> >
> > I don't think RFC 4519 is what you're looking for, you want to be
> > looking at the X509 Certificate RFC's.
> >
> > Ugh, the RFC's for this stuff is a tangled mess of cross references to
> > other RFC's. It's ugly and hard to decipher which is probably why
> > these issues seem to keep cropping up.
> >
> 
> Yes, they are ...
> 
> 
> >
> > > The main reason for pushing this question is that from a security
> > > perspective, using a deprecated attribute type in subject dn is not
> > > good. Privacy concerns may apply here too where you may not want
> > > people to put the email (sensitive) in something that is supposed to be public.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's the question. You don't have control over the
> > certs that are presented to you. Rather your job is to ascertain if
> > you can unequivocally map the cert subject to a principal in your
> > domain. You probably can't put a stake in the ground and demand the
> > subject contain certain RDN's (with the exception of the CN). And FWIW
> > just to make things even more confusing a common convention for client
> > certs is to put the users email address as the subject's CN.
> >
> > I have a suggestion, I'm not the ultimate authority on this stuff. We
> > have a developer on the Certificate Server team who I believe has an
> > even more in depth understanding and is probably more current on this
> > topic that I am (I did this work several years ago). He is Fraser
> > Tweedale <ftweedal at redhat.com>, perhaps you might want to open a
> > discussion with him. FWIW the Certificate Server is also written in
> > Java and he might be able to share Java code snippets with you on the
> > best way to perform these comparisons.
> >
> 
> Yeah, we can not control how people are issuing certificates. I was trying to find
> someone to say "Yeah, emailAddress is really a bad practice in subject dn.
> People should use SAN instead".
> 
> I think your contact may help here with both issues, for sure. Although I'm
> convinced that at least the changes made in that PR are fine instead of possibly
> breaking use cases by forcing canonicalization.
> 
> 
> >
> >
> > --
> > John Dennis
> >
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