Middleware Tutorial and Use Renee Woodten Frost Project Manager, Internet2 Middleware Initiative Internet2 Middleware Liaison, University of Michigan ARKNet March 2001

ARKNet 2001 Topics Acknowledgements The larger picture Core middleware: the basic technologies Identifiers Authentication Directories Authorization PKI The major projects EduPerson, LDAP Recipe, the Directory of Directories, Shibboleth, HEPKI What to do and where to watch?

ARKNet 2001 Acknowledgements MACE and the working groups Early Harvest - NSF catalytic grant and meeting Early Adopters Higher Ed partners - campuses, EDUCAUSE, CREN, AACRAO, NACUA, etc Corporate partners - IBM, ATT, SUN, et al... Government partners - including NSF and the fPKI TWG

ARKNet 2001 Mace (Middleware Architecture Committee for Education) Purpose - to provide advice, create experiments, foster standards, etc. on key technical issues for core middleware within higher ed Membership - Bob Morgan (UW) Chair, Steven Carmody (Brown), Michael Gettes (Georgetown), Keith Hazelton (Wisconsin), Paul Hill (MIT), Jim Jokl (Virginia), Mark Poepping (CMU), David Wasley (U California), Von Welch (Grid) Creates working groups in major areas, including directories, inter-realm authentication, PKI, medical issues, video, etc. Works via conference calls, s, occasional serendipitous in- person meetings...

ARKNet 2001 Early Harvest NSF funded workshop in Fall 99 and subsequent activities Defined the territory and established a work plan Best practices in identifiers, authentication, and directories (

ARKNet 2001 Early Adopters: The Campus Testbed Phase A variety of roles and missions Commitment to move implementation forward Provided some training and facilitated support Develop national models of deployment alternatives Address policy standards Profiles and plans are on I2 middleware site.

ARKNet 2001 Early Adopter Participants Dartmouth Univ of Hawaii Johns Hopkins Univ Univ of Maryland, Baltimore County Univ of Memphis Univ of Michigan Michigan Tech Univ Univ of Pittsburgh Univ of Southern California Tufts Univ Univ of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis

ARKNet 2001 Partnerships EDUCAUSE CREN Grids, JA-SIG, OKI Campuses Higher Ed professional associations - AACRAO, NACUA, CUMREC, etc. Increasing international interactions Corporate - IBM, SUN, ATT, etc.

ARKNet 2001 Remedial IT architecture The proliferation of customizable applications requires a centralization of “customizations” The increase in power and complexity of the network requires access to user profiles Electronic personal security services is now an impediment to the next-generation computing grids Inter-institutional applications require interoperational deployments of institutional directories and authentication

ARKNet 2001 What is Middleware? Specialized networked services that are shared by applications and users A set of core software components that permit scaling of applications and networks Tools that take the complexity out of application integration Sits above the network as the second layer of the IT infrastructure A land where technology meets policy The intersection of what networks designers and applications developers each do not want to do

ARKNet 2001 Specifically, Digital libraries need scalable, interoperable authentication and authorization. The Grid as the new paradigm for a computational resource, with Globus the middleware, including security, location and allocation of resources, scheduling, etc. relies on campus- based services and inter-institutional standards Instructional Management Systems (IMS) needs authentication and directories Next-generation portals want common authentication and storage Academic collaboration requires restricted sharing of materials between institutions What I1 did with communication, I2 may do with collaboration

ARKNet 2001 A Map of Middlewareland Network-layer middleware Core middleware Academic Computing Upperware Research Oriented Upperware Business Upperware

ARKNet 2001 The Grid A model for a distributed computing environment, addressing diverse computational resources, distributed databases, network bandwidth, object brokering, security, etc. Globus ( is the software that implements most of these components; Legion is another such software environment Needs to integrate with campus infrastructure Gridforum ( umbrella activity of agencies and academics Look for grids to occur locally and nationally, in physics, earthquake engineering, etc.

ARKNet 2001 Core Middleware Identity - unique markers of who you (person, machine, service, group) are Authentication - how you prove or establish that you are that identity Directories - where an identity’s basic characteristics are kept Authorization - what an identity is permitted to do PKI - emerging tools for security services

ARKNet 2001 What is the nature of the work? Technological Establish campus-wide services: name space, authentication Build an enterprise directory service Populate the directory from source systems Enable applications to use the directory Policies and Politics Clarify relationships between individuals and institution Determine who manages, who can update and who can see common data Structure information access and use rules between departments and central administrative units Reconcile business rules and practices

ARKNet 2001 What are the benefits to the institution? Economies for central IT - reduced account management, better web site access controls, tighter network security... Economies for distributed IT - reduced administration, access to better information feeds, easier integration of departmental applications into campus-wide use... Improved services for students and faculty - access to scholarly information, control of personal data, reduced legal exposures... Participation in future research environments - Grids, Videoconferencing, etc. Participation in new collaborative initiatives - DoD, Shibboleth, etc.

ARKNet 2001 What are the costs to the institution? Modest increases in capital equipment and staffing requirements for central IT Considerable time and effort to conduct campus wide planning and vetting processes One-time costs to retrofit some applications to new central infrastructure One-time costs to build feeds from legacy source systems to central directory services The political wounds from the reduction of duchies in data and policies

ARKNet 2001 OIDs to reference identifiers Numeric coding to uniquely define many middleware elements, such as directory attributes and certificate policies. Numbering is only for identification (are two oids equal? If so, the associated objects are the same); no ordering, search, hierarchy, etc. Distributed management; each campus typically obtains an “arc”, e.g , and then creates oids by extending the arc, e.g , , More info at: OIDs.doc

ARKNet 2001 Major campus identifiers UUID Student and/or emplid Person registry id Account login id Enterprise-lan id Student ID card Netid address Library/deptl id Publicly visible id (and pseudossn) Pseudonymous id

ARKNet 2001 General Identifier Characteristics Uniqueness (within a given context) Dumb vs intelligent (i.e. whether subfields have meaning) Readability (machine vs human vs device) Affordance (centrally versus locally provided) Resolver approach (how identifier is mapped to its associated object) Metadata (both associated with the assignment and resolution of an identifier) Persistence (permanence of relationship between identifier and specific object) Granularity (degree to which an identifier denotes a collection or component) Format (checkdigits) Versions (can the defining characteristics of an identifier change over time) Capacity (size limitations imposed on the domain or object range) Extensibility (the capability to intelligently extend one identifier to be the basis for another identifier).

ARKNet 2001 Important Characteristics Semantics and syntax- what it names and how does it name it Domain - who issues and over what space is identifier unique Revocation - can the subject ever be given a different value for the identifier Reassignment - can the identifier ever be given to another subject Opacity - is the real world subject easily deduced from the identifier - privacy and use issues

ARKNet 2001 Identifier Mapping Process Map campus identifiers against a canonical set of functional needs For each identifier, establish its key characteristics, including revocation, reassignment, privileges, and opacity Shine a light on some of the shadowy underpinnings of middleware A key first step towards the loftier middleware goals

ARKNet 2001 Authentication Options Password based Clear text LDAP Kerberos (Microsoft or K5 flavors) Certificate based Others - challenge-response, biometrics Inter-realm is now the interesting frontier

ARKNet 2001 Cuttings: Authentication User side management - crack, change, compromise Central side password management - change management, OS security First password assignment - secure delivery Policies - restrictions or requirements on use

ARKNet 2001 Some Authentication Good Practices Pre-crack new passwords Pre-crack using foreign dictionaries as well as US Confirm new passwords are different than old Require password change if possibly compromised Use shared secrets or positive photo-id to reset forgotten passwords USmail a one-time password (time-bomb) In-person with a photo id (some require two) For remote faculty or staff, an authorized departmental rep in person coupled with a faxed photo-id. Initial identification/authentication will emerge as a critical component of PKI

ARKNet 2001 Directory Issues Applications Overall architecture Chaining and referrals, Redundancy and Load Balancing, Replication, synchronization, Directory discovery The Schema and the Directory Information Tree (DIT) attributes, ou’s, naming, object classes, groups Attributes and indexing Management clients, delegation of access control, data feeds

ARKNet 2001 Directory-enabled Applications Account management Web access controls Portal support Calendaring Grids

ARKNet 2001 A Campus Directory Architecture Metadirectory Enterprise directory Dir DB Departmental directories OS directories (MS, Novell, etc) Border directory Registries Source systems

ARKNet 2001 Key Architectural Issues Interfaces and relationships with legacy systems Performance in searching Binding to the directory Load balancing and backups are emerging but proprietary Who can read or update what fields How much to couple the enterprise directory with an operating system

ARKNet 2001 Schema and DIT Good Practices People, machines, services Be very flat in people space Keep accounts as attributes, not as an ou Replication and group policies should not drive schema RDN name choices rich and critical Other keys to index Creating and preserving unified name spaces

ARKNet 2001 Attribute Good Practices INetOrgPerson, eduPerson, localPerson Never repurpose an RFC defined field; add new attributes Adding attributes is easier than thought Keep schema checking on, unless it is done in the underlying database; watch performance Most LDAP clients do not treat multi-valued attributes well, but doing multiple fields and separate dn’s no better.

ARKNet 2001 Management Good Practices No trolling permitted; more search than read LDAP client access versus web access Give deep thought to who can update Give deep thought to when to update LDIF likely to be replaced by XML as exchange format Delegation of control - scalability “See also”, referrals, replication, synchronization in practice Replication should not be done tree-based but should be filtered by rules and attributes

ARKNet 2001 PKI First thoughts Fundamentals - Components and Contexts The missing pieces - in the technology and in the community Higher Ed Activities (CREN, HEPKI-TAG, HEPKI-PAG, PKI Labs)

ARKNet 2001 PKI: A few observations Think of it as wall jack connectivity, except it’s connectivity for individuals, not for machines, and there’s no wall or jack…But it is that ubiquitous and important Does it need to be a single infrastructure? What are the costs of multiple solutions? Subnets and ITPs... Options breed complexity; managing complexity is essential PKI can do so much that right now, it does very little. IP connectivity was a field of dreams. We built it and then the applications came. Unfortunately, here the applications have arrived before the infrastructure, making its development much harder. No one seems to be working on the solutions for the agora.

ARKNet 2001 Uses for PKI and Certificates Authentication and pseudo-authentication Signing docs Encrypting docs and mail Non-repudiation Secure channels across a network Authorization and attributes Secure multicast and more...

ARKNet 2001 PKI Components X.509 v3 certificates - profiles and uses Validation - Certificate Revocation Lists, OCSP, path construction Certificate management - generating certs, using keys, archiving and escrow, mobility, etc. Directories - to store certs, and public keys and maybe private keys Trust models and I/A Cert-enabled apps

ARKNet 2001 PKI Contexts for Usage Intracampus Within the Higher Ed community of interest In the Broader World

ARKNet 2001 PKI Implementation Options In-source - with public domain or campus unique In-source - with commercial product Bring-in-source - with commercial services Out-source - a spectrum of services and issues what you do depends on when you do it...

ARKNet 2001 What Isn’t Here Yet… Certificate Policies and Practice Statements Inter-realm trust structures Mobility

ARKNet 2001 The Gathering Clouds aka Tightly-Knit Vapor PKI - the research labs and HEPKI-TAG, PAG eduPerson the Directory of Directories Shibboleth Medical Middleware

ARKNet 2001 Internet2 PKI Labs At Dartmouth and Wisconsin in computer science departments and IT organizations Doing the deep research - two to five years out Policy languages, path construction, attribute certificates, etc. National Advisory Board of leading academic and corporate PKI experts provides direction Catalyzed by startup funding from ATT

ARKNet 2001 HEPKI ( HEPKI - Technical Activities Group (TAG) universities actively working technical issues topics include Kerberos-PKI integration, public domain CA, profiles regular conf calls, archives HEPKI - Policy Activities Group (PAG) universities actively trying to deploy PKI topics include certificate policies, RFP sharing, interactions with state governments regular conf calls, archives

ARKNet 2001 Activities Mace - RL “Bob” Morgan (Washington) Early Harvest / Early Adopters -Renee Frost (Michigan) LDAP Recipe - Michael Gettes (Georgetown) EduPerson - Keith Hazelton (Wisconsin) Directory of Directories - Michael Gettes (Georgetown) Metadirectories - Keith Hazelton (Wisconsin) Shibboleth - Steven Carmody (Brown) PKI Labs - Dartmouth and Wisconsin HEPKI-TAG and PAG - Jim Jokl (Virginia) and Ken Klingenstein (Colorado) HEBCA - Mark Luker (EDUCAUSE) Medical Middleware - Rob Carter (Duke) Opportunities - video, the GRID, K-12

ARKNet 2001 Early Harvest and Early Adopters Early harvest in the barn… Early adopters aggressively doing deployments MTU, UMBC, JHU

ARKNet 2001 LDAP Recipe How to build and operate a directory in higher ed 1 Tsp. DIT planning 1 Tbsp Schema design 3 oz. configuration 1000 lbs of data Good details, such as tradeoffs/recommendations on indexing, how and when to replicate, etc.

ARKNet 2001 eduPerson A directory objectclass intended to support inter-institutional applications Fills gaps in traditional directory schema For existing attributes, states good practices where known Specifies several new attributes and controlled vocabulary to use as values. Provides suggestions on how to assign values, but it is up to the institution to choose. Presumes campuses to add local person objectclass. A joint effort of EDUCAUSE and I2

ARKNet 2001 Issues about Upper Class Attributes eduPerson inherits attributes from person, inetorgperson Some of those attributes need conventions about controlled vocabulary (e.g. telephones) Some of those attributes need ambiguity resolved via a consistent interpretation (e.g. address) Some of the attributes need standards around indexing and search (e.g. compound surnames) Many of those attributes need access control and privacy decisions (e.g jpeg photo, address, etc.)

ARKNet 2001 Examples of eduPerson Attributes eduPersonAffiliation multi-valued list of relationships an individual has with institution controlled vocabulary includes:faculty, staff, student, alum, member, affiliate,employee applications that use: DoD, white pages eduPersonPrinicipleName EPPN may look like an address but it is used by different systems One must be able to authenticate against the EPPN Used in inter-realm authentication such as Shibboleth In some situations it can be used for access control lists; if used, a site should make sure what the reassignment policy is.

ARKNet 2001 Next Steps eduPerson 1.0 done, along with FAQ and letter to implementers Ties closely to LDAP recipe Version 2.0 to include attributes for videoconferencing, additional collaboration factors, links to Grids, portals, etc. Check with web site for additional changes Participate:

ARKNet 2001 A Directory of Directories An experiment to build a combined directory search service To show the power of coordination Will highlight the inconsistencies between institutions Technical investigation of load and scaling issues, centralized and decentralized approaches Human interfaces issues - searching large name spaces with limits by substring, location, affiliation, etc... Two different experimental regimes to be tested centralized indexing and repository with referrals large-scale parallel searches with heuristics to constrain search space SUN donation of server and iPlanet license (6,000,000 dn’s) Michael Gettes, Georgetown, project manager

ARKNet 2001 Metadirectories Metamerge – product available free of charge to Higher Ed in USA Higher Ed contact in USA: Keith Hazelton, University of Wisconsin Source code will be in escrow. Features: GUI development environment NOT a Meta-Directory, but a tool to build same functionality Various Languages: JavaScript, Java, Perl, Rexx, etc… Various Parsers: XML, LDIF, CSV, Script Interface, etc … for input and output Various Connectors: COMport, Files, HTTP, HTTPserver, FTP, LDAP, JDBC, Oracle and more … The product is ALL Java

ARKNet 2001 Shibboleth A word which was made the criterion by which to distinguish the Ephraimites from the Gileadites. The Ephraimites, not being able to pronounce sh, called the word sibboleth. See --Judges xii. Hence, the criterion, test, or watchword of a party; a party cry or pet phrase. - Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

ARKNet 2001 Shibboleth Inter-institutional web authentication and basic authorization Authenticate locally, act globally - the Shibboleth shibboleth Emphasizes privacy through progressive disclosure of attributes Linked to commercial standards development in XML through OASIS Scenarios done; architecture next; implementation by fall Strong partnership with IBM to develop and deploy

ARKNet 2001 Isn’t This What PKI Does? PKI does this and a whole lot more; as a consequence, PKI does very little right now End-to-end PKI fits the Shibboleth model, but other forms of authentication do as well Uses a lightweight certificate approach for inter-institutional communications - uses the parts of PKI that work today (server side certs) and avoids the parts of PKI that don’t work today (eg client certs). Allows campuses to use other forms of authentication locally May actually have benefits over the end-user to target-site direct interactions...

ARKNet 2001 Related Work Previous DLF work OASIS Technical Committee (vendor activity, kicked off 1/2001) open.org/committees/security/index.shtml UK - Athens and Sparta projects Spain - rediris project

ARKNet 2001 Assumptions “authenticate locally, act globally” the Shibboleth shibboleth Leverage vendor and standards activity wherever possible Disturb as little of the existing campus infrastructure as possible Work with common, minimal authorization systems (eg htaccess) Encourage good campus behaviors Learn through doing Create a marketplace and reference implementations We will not be another dead guppy Protect Personal Privacy!

ARKNet 2001 Development Process Scenarios leading to requirements Establish model architectures for common services and scenario-specific services Develop service and protocol requirements Identify service options/begin protocol development Produce open implementations of missing service components; provide external services as needed

ARKNet 2001 Stage 1 - Addressing Three Scenario’s Member of campus community accessing licensed resource Anonymity required Member of a course accessing remotely controlled resource Anonymity required Member of a workgroup accessing controlled resources Controlled by unique identifiers (e.g. name) Taken individually, each of these situations can be solved in a variety of straightforward ways. Taken together, they present the challenge of meeting the user's reasonable expectations for protection of their personal privacy.

ARKNet 2001 Model Local Authentication Local Entity Willing to Create and Sign Entitlement Set of assertions about the user (Attribute/value pairs) User has control over disclosure Identity optional “active member of community”, “Associated with Course XYZ” Target responsible for Authorization Rules engine Matches contents of entitlements against ruleset associated with target object Cross Domain Trust Previously created between origin and target Perhaps there is a contract (information providers..)

ARKNet 2001 Target Web Server Origin Site Target Site Browser Authentication Phase First Access - Unauthenticated Authorization Phase Pass content if user is allowed Shibboleth Architecture Concepts - High Level

ARKNet 2001 Second Access - Authenticated Target Web Server Origin Site Target Site Browser First Access - Unauthenticated Web Login Server Redirect User to Local Web Login Ask to Obtain Entitlements Pass entitlements for authz decision Pass content if user is allowed Authentication Attribute Server Entitlements Auth OK Req Ent Ent Prompt Authentication Phase Authorization Phase Success! Shibboleth Architecture Concepts (detail)

ARKNet 2001 Target Web Server Origin Site Target Site Browser Attribute Server Shib htaccess plugin Club Shib Server (holds certs and contracts) Shibboleth Architecture Concepts #1 (managing trust)

ARKNet 2001 OASIS Charge Standardize: an XML format for "assertions" of both names/identities and entitlements/privileges/attributes a request/response protocol for obtaining assertions transport bindings for this protocol to HTTP, S/MIME, RMI, etc. This will be accompanied by requirements/scenarios, compliance info, security considerations, etc

ARKNet 2001 Entitlements A set of Assertions “active member of the community” “active in course X” member of group “georgetown.giia ? Signed by the institution!

ARKNet 2001 Personal Privacy Personal Information is released to site X based on: Contract provisions Current request from the target User control!

ARKNet 2001 Campus and Resource Requirements To participate in Shibboleth, a site must have: Campus-wide authentication service Campus-wide identifier space (EPPN) Implementation of Eduperson objectclass Ability to generate attributes (eg “active member of the community”)

ARKNet 2001 Issues Personal Privacy (reasonable expectation, laws) Relation to local weblogin (Single Signon) Portals Use of Shibboleth framework by services beyond the web Grid resources and users

ARKNet 2001 Internals of the Shibboleth Model: Functions and Standards There are component services that are assumed to exist already on campuses There are new functional services that must be implemented There are new protocols that must be developed There are data and metadata definitions that must be standardized.

ARKNet 2001 Internals of the Shibboleth Model: Services, standards, protocols Local authentication service OASIS XML Standard Interrealm information exchange protocols for authn and authz Local Shibboleth control point Web access control service Web SSO service Institutional shib key distribution service Where from service Identifier privacy engine Credential Factory Local attribute server

ARKNet 2001 Descriptions of services Local authn server - assumed part of the campus environment Local web sso server Local web access control tools (eg htaccess) Credential factory - assembles/disassembles signed XML objects using attribute servers Local attribute server - an LDAP directory, or roles database or…. Where from service - one possible way to direct external users to their own local authn service Privacy identifier engine - one possible way to manage identifiers to protect privacy Local Shib control point - to coordinate/config/manage Shibboleth services Institutional Shib key distribution service- a way to manage inter- institutional exchange of signing keys

ARKNet 2001 Project Status/Next Steps Requirements and Scenarios document nearly finished IBM and Mace-Shibboleth are refining architecture and evaluating issues IBM intends to develop an Apache web module Internet2 intends to develop supporting materials (documentation, installation, etc) and web tools (for htaccess construction, filter and access control, remote resource attribute discovery). Technical design complete - April, 2001 Coding... Pilot site start-up - Aug, 2001 Public demo - Internet2 Fall Member Meeting 2001

ARKNet 2001 Middleware Inputs & Outputs Grids JA-SIG & uPortalOKIInter-realmcalendaring Shibboleth, eduPerson, Affiliated Dirs, etc. EnterpriseDirectoryEnterpriseAuthenticationLegacySystemsCampus web sso futures EnterpriseauthZ LicensedResourcesEmbedded App Security Shibboleth, eduPerson, and everything else

ARKNet 2001 Internet2 PKI Labs At Dartmouth and Wisconsin in computer science departments and IT organizations Doing the deep research - two to five years out Policy languages, path construction, attribute certificates, etc. National Advisory Board of leading academic and corporate PKI experts provides direction Catalyzed by startup funding from ATT

ARKNet 2001 HEPKI-TAG Chaired by Jim Jokl, Virginia Certificate profiles survey of existing uses development of standard presentation identity cert standard recommendation Mobility options - SACRED scenarios Public domain software alternatives

ARKNet 2001 HEPKI-PAG David Wasley, U California, prime mover Draft certificate policy for a campus HEBCA certificate policy FERPA State Legislatures Gartner Group Decision Maker software

ARKNet 2001 Medical Middleware Unique requirements - HIPAA, disparate relationships, extended community, etc. Unique demands - 7x24, visibility PKI seen as a key tool MaceMed recently formed to explore the issues

ARKNet 2001 The complex challenges of academic medical middleware Intrarealm issues - multiple vendors, proprietary systems, evolving regulations Enterprise issues - security, directories, authorization; balance of institutional and medical enterprises Interrealm issues - standards, gateways, common operational processes and policies, performance Multiple communities of interest - institutional, medical center, affiliated hospitals, state and federal regulatory and certification organizations, insurance companies, medical researchers, etc.

ARKNet 2001 The enterprise architect view of medical middleware Person registry Enterprise directory App dir Border Directory LAN dir Institutional Student Financial Personnel Systems Medical Administrative Systems Hospital Administrative Systems Peer institutions PKI Authentication Services Federal State Gov’ts Corporate collaborators Internet Research Systems Authorization Services

ARKNet 2001 What’s On the Horizon Video and portals Grid integration K-12

ARKNet 2001 Video A variety of tools - vic/vat, H.323, MPEG 2, HDTV Point-to-point and MCU options H.323 desktop video within reach at physical layer Lacks identifiers and authentication EPPN and Shibboleth-type flow could address

ARKNet 2001 More information Early Harvest / Early Adopters - Mace - middleware.internet2.edu LDAP Recipe - recipe/ Eduperson - Directory of Directories - middleware.internet2.edu/dodhe Shibboleth - middleware.internet2.edu/shibboleth HEPKI-TAG - HEPKI-PAG - Medical Middleware - web site to follow Opportunities - video, the GRID, K-12