[Zope] kerberos ? + LDAP + ecommerce + ZEO replication etc

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 15:12:38 +1000

The kerberos ticket certainly *can* be put to "sensible use".

An open source unix interoperability kit for using the Active Directory
(AD) version of Kerberos is freely available from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/kerberossamp.htm

It is based on the same underlying software as the PAM modules.

The AD "Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication in
Kerberos." is based on IETF PKINIT draft 09:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q248/7/53.ASP

Other details on MS kerberos can be obtained by search for
"kerberos" keyword on MSDN.

Except for certain proprietary extensions, the technical specs
for which have since been published elsewhere:

http://www.gnosis.cx/download/kerbspec.pdf

These extensions include a list of the resource and account
groups that the principal is a member of, which enable very
rapid and scalable use of finely grained AD permissions
via only the kerberos "ticket" once the slow initial PKINT
logon to obtain that ticket has been done.

This is a vast improvement on simple LDAP authentication,
which Microsoft attempted, but failed, to keep a "trade
secret", presumably to shore up their monopoly against
competition from Samba NT domain controllers etc.

BTW I've done some detailed study of the AD permissions
structure and it's relation to other things if anybody
needs help with that side of it.

Adding those specs to the freely available unix kit should
allow any client on any platform to work with any services
dependent on AD and thus avoid being locked out.

In particular Zope (on any platform) could provide
a web (including XML-RPC/SOAP etc) front end for both access
and management by obtaining the client (from any platform)
plaintext logon password over a secure transport, never
storing it persistently unencrypted, but returning an
encrypted kerberos ticket as a cookie for future access.

I described a plausible approach for a similar problem
with credit card numbers at:
http://lists.codeit.com/pipermail/zcommerce/2000-June/000247.html

The ticket will automatically expire (and can
automatically be renewed) giving all the usual
kerberos safeguards, provided the transport is
secure and there is no unencrypted persistent
storage within Zope.

The list of groups can then work well with the Zope
acquisition based access control system.

Separately, freely available Kereberos and OpenLDAP
implementations can be extended to eliminate
any need for Win2K AD itself by adding the single
valued binary attribute "ntSecurityDescriptor" in
the same format as AD.

The Samba project ought to be very interested in
that:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=samba-ntdom&w=2&r=1&s=active+directory&q=b

So should DC for Zope together with ActiveState that
already has expertize in ADSI/COM. (Likewise has major
implications for distributed COM+ version of Mozilla XPCOM).

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/PyXPCOM/index.html

Zope's ZODB/ZEO also provides an excellent OODBMS "aggressively
optimized" for a high ratio of reads to writes that is very
suitable for the "active" side of an Active Directory (using
BerekelyDB storage similar to that used in OpenLDAP).

ZEO is also looking at multi-master replication issues (though
the approach looks a bit naive to me).

TransWarp is very relevant to the stuff below.
http://www.zope.org//Members/pje/Wikis/TransWarp/HomePage

PostgreSQL provides an excellent ORDBMS more suitable for
the "search" side of a directory than ZODB. It will very
soon include python as a backend stored procedure language
and has a sophisticated "rules" system.

OpenLDAP already provides an excellent front end,
including SASL authentication:

http://www.openldap.org/software/roadmap.html

ACS 4 provides an Oracle based web application server framework
with LDAP integration. The kernel has a finely grained permissions
system, with a role/party/group framework compatible with the
"Accountability" pattern and an object model compatible with
the "Domain Object Model" pattern. This is very appropriate
for a sophisticated LDAP directory backend (as well as being
necessary for the industrial strength RDBMS essential for
serious Zope ecommerce).

http://developer.arsdigita.com/doc/kernel-doc.html

http://www.martinfowler.com/ap2/index.html
http://www.martinfowler.com/apsupp/accountability.pdf
http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/johnson/DOM.html

ACS4 also provides an excellent workflow engine:
http://developer.arsdigita.com/doc/acs-workflow/

This can add the missing "strategy" side of the
Domain Object Model together with Transwarp.
Zope can provide much better UI and management
stuff to work with the engine.

It can also be a basis for reliable distributed
workflow/transactions/replication:

http://www.distribution.cs.ncl.ac.uk/projects/WorkflowSystem/index.html

This is a better approach for some types of database
replication than that currently proposed for ZEO or
the usual approaches described in Chapter 8 of:
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/ccontrol/

ACS4 is being ported to PostgreSQL by OpenACS which
has previously ported ACS3:
http://openacs.org/4/
http://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic_id=12&topic=OpenACS%204%2e0%20De
sign
Initial version of kernel already out.

Adapting the unix interoperability kit for AD to also use the kerberos
extensions for AD groups and permissions and provide a cross platform
solution like (and with) OpenSSL is a small project. OpenSSL should have
any needed expertize:
http://www.openssl.org

Public Key Certificate Authority software is also available, including
for python:
http://www.pyca.de/

A number of better approaches to trust management are well known:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html

Unfortunately that minor adaptation of kerberos clients is peripheral
to the main focus of most of the projects mentioned, but could well
be a key link for bringing them together to both knock Microsoft
off it's perch and provide more decentralized trust and directory
services necessary for the rapid explosion of peer to peer
networked web services.

I sure hope somebody is working on it. If anybody has any relevant
links or email addresses please email them directly as well as
posting here (I only scan occasional messages from the Zope list).

BTW, while I'm at it with all the links above, I'd like to draw
attention to some earlier postings re the need for Zope and ACS
to combined for viable ecommerce:

http://lists.codeit.com/pipermail/zcommerce/2000-June/000265.html
http://lists.codeit.com/pipermail/zcommerce/2000-June/000259.html
http://lists.codeit.com/pipermail/zcommerce/2000-June/000257.html

Right now arsDigita is going through a major upheaval and it looks
like OpenACS will provide an umbrella home for various ports of
ACS 4, including python/Zope as well as their main orientation
to Tcl. The data model of ACS4 is now much better separated from
the Tcl side and they are doing a Query Dispatcher for supporting
multiple RDBMS ports (with some tools in python for extracting
SQL from the Tcl code completely ;-).

http://developer.arsdigita.com/commerce-project-central/

http://www.arsdigita.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg%5fid=000b5M&topic%5fid
=web%2fdb&topic=

http://www.arsdigita.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg%5fid=000ZGz&topic%5fid
=web%2fdb&topic=

A Zopista involved in OpenACS has mentioned working on port of data
models of ecommerce module. That could result in a Zope port if there
is active support from DC.

http://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0001AP&topic_id=12&to
pic=OpenACS%204%2e0%20Design

At the same time there seems to be some problems with an AOLserver
fork that could result in greater interest in using Zserver (don't
know much about that - just speculating).

If June 2000 was "premature", perhaps this is a better time to
hope for some serious DC interest both in enabling an industrial
strength ecommerce and workflow system for Zope and in integrating
Zope with enterprise systems dependent on AD (if not in eventually
replacing AD ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: zope-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of
Mayers, Philip J
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 9:12 AM
To: 'zope@zope.org'
Subject: RE: [Zope] kerberos ?

Yes - There's a pam module for Python, and with PythonScripts, External
methods and a LoginManager setup, I got it working. Quite slow, which is
fine if you only authenticate once, but not if you do it on every HTTP
request.

(Note: I never bothered to check if LoginManager does once-only or
per-request HTTP auth - I only did it as a five minute test, and a quick
check on the machine shows that the logs have rotated out :o()

The PAM module for Python can be found at www.python.org, go to Search, in
the Vaults of Parnassus link type PAM.

I'm not sure the ticket you got could be put to any sensible use though...
Maybe... Hmm, just had a thought...

Cheers,
Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Darcy Clark
To: zope@zope.org
Sent: 24/03/01 22:29
Subject: [Zope] kerberos ?

has anyone tried to get Zope working with kerberos authentication ?

Darcy

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