[undertow-dev] Undertow Security: PicketBox5

[Darran Lofthouse]

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.
  - 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.
  - 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.

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.

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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