| Re: [stellation-res] RFC: Authentication, authorization, ACLs and JAAS. |
On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 01:25:53PM -0400, Mark C. Chu-Carroll wrote: > > So... I've been spending a lot of time lately on working out how to > handle access control in Stellation, and how to fix the security holes > that we currently have. > > Following advice from others on this list, I've been reading up > on JAAS, the Java Authentication and Authorization Service, to > see if it's something we should be using. > > Based on my reading, I'm leaning heavily against using it. I'll > give my reasons, and then I'd like to hear what others think, > particularly if you think I'm wrong, and we should use JAAS. [snip] I was looking on using JAAS for the first A - authentication. But that by itself is trivial to do and not useful if not coupled with the second A. Indeed the Authorization/Access Control in JAAS is complicated. But we might as well not bother. Their authorization model is centered around allowing the logged in user to execute certain methods in an application. That model has little to do with our client/server model where the user can do whatever they want on their machine (as the server doesn't trust that information anyway) and the server runs as a dedicated user on the remote machine. > (On the other hand, I've learned quite a bit about using > the crytographic capabilities of Java, and I'm seriously considering > using them to improve the security of our communication and > authentication. Details to follow when I have time. Expect > a writeup of an ACL proposal later today.) Waiting for it... florin -- "If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is." 41A9 2BDE 8E11 F1C5 87A6 03EE 34B3 E075 3B90 DFE4
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