Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Federation peering à la EuropeanThe eduGAIN way

Diego R. Lopez - RedIRIS

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateAs Federations Grow• The risk of dying of success

– Do we really need to go on selling the federated idea?• Different communities, different needs

– Not even talking about international collaboration– Different (but mostly alike) solutions– Grids and libraries as current examples– And many to come: Governments, professional

associations, commercial operators,…• Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Real And Only Global

Federation

Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Confederations Federate Federations• Same federating principles applied to federations themselves

– Own policies and technologies are locally applied• Independent management

– Identity and authentication-authorization must be properly handled by the participating federations

• Commonly agreed policy– Linking individual federation policies– Coarser than them

• Trust fabric entangling participants– Whitout affecting each federation’s fabric– E2E trust must be dynamically built

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateFirst Steps• Simplifying user collaboration across whatever border is an excellent

selling argument

– Making the whole promise of the VO idea

– eduroam fast worldwide success is a clear example• Lingua franca

– Syntax: SAML profiles• Converging to 2.0

– Semantics: eduPerson, SCHAC• Trust fabric

– Public key technologies (if not infrastructures)– Component identifiers and registries– Metadata repositories

Connect. Communicate. CollaboratePolicy and Legal Matters• The PMA model has proven extremely useful

– Consensual set of guidelines– Peer-reviewed accreditation

• Legal matters: Hic sunt leones– For techies like us– Privacy– Liability– More or less manageable in the case of (national)

federations

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe AAI Goal in GÉANT2

• To build an interoperable authentication and authorisation infrastructure that will be used all over Europe enabling seamless sharing of e-science resources

• We started from– Scattered AAI implementations in the EU and abroad

• And growing– The basic idea of federating them, preserving hard-

won achievements

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Applying Confederation Concepts• An eduGAIN confederation is a loosely-coupled set of

cooperating identity federations– That handle identity management, authentication and

authorization using their own policies• Trust between any two participants in different federations

is dynamically established– Members of a participant federation do not know in

advance about members in the other federations• Syntax and semantics are adapted to a common language

– Through an abstract service definition

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe eduGAIN Components

• Bridging Elements (BE)– Interconnection points– Federation-wide (LFA) or distributed (LA)

• Federation Peering Point (FPP)– Able to announce BE metadata

• The Metadata Service (MDS)– Publishing interface (to FPPs)– Querying interface (to BEs)

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe eduGAIN Model Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Id Repository(ies)Resource(s)

MDS

R-FPP

MetadataPublish

R-BE

MetadataQuery

AAInteraction

H-FPP

MetadataPublish

H-BE

AAInteraction

AA Interaction

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateAn Adaptable ModelFrom centralized structures... Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

MDS

FPP

BE

FPP

BE

SPSP

SPSP

SP

IdP

IdP

IdP

IdP

IdP

IdP

IdPSP SP SP SP

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateAn Adaptable Model...to fully E2E ones... Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

MDS

SPBE

IdPBE

SPBE

SPBE

SPBE

SPBE

IdPBE

IdPBE

IdPBE

SPBE

IdPBE

IdPBEIdP

BE

SPBE

SPBE

SPBE

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateAn Adaptable Model...including any mix of them Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

MDS

SPBE

IdPBE

IdPBEIdP

BE

SPBE

SPBE

SPBE

FPP

BE

SPSP

SPSP

SP

IdP

IdP

IdP

IdPBE

FPP

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe (X.509) Trust Fabric• Validation procedures include

– Normal certificate validation• Trust path evaluation, signatures, revocation,…

– Peer identification• Certificates hold the component identifier• It must match the appropriate metadata

• Applicable to– TLS connections between components

• Two-way validation is mandatory– Verification of signed XML assertions

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateComponent Identifiers

• eduGAIN operations strongly depend on having unique, structured and well-defined component identifiers

• Based on URNs delegated by the eduGAIN registry to the participating federation

• Identifiers establish the kind of component they apply to by means of normalized prefixes

• Identifiers follow the hierarchy of the trust establishing process

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A General Model for eduGAIN Interactions Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Requester Responder

Id RepositoryResource

TLS Channel(s)

MDS

TLS Channel

https://mds.geant.net/ ?cid=someURN <EntityDescriptor . . .

entityID= ”urn:geant2:..:responder">. . .<SingleSignOnService . . . Location= “https://responder.dom/” /> . . .

<samlp:Request . . . RequestID=”e70c3e9e6…” IssueInstant=“2006-06…”> . . .</samlp:Request>

<samlp:Response . . . ResponseID=”092e50a08…” InResponseTo=“e70c3e9e…”> . . .</samlp:Response>

urn:geant2:...:responder

urn:geant2:...:requester

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateOperation Mapping• Maps the abstract service definition into actual protocols• Current version is based on SAML 1.1

– Profiling the standard to fit abstract parameters• A SAML 2.0 implementation will be available along the

lifetime of the project– The abstract service specification protects components

and applications from these changes• Authentication assertions and attribute exchange

mechanisms are designed to be Shibboleth 1.3 compatible– And Shibboleth 2 in the future

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateMetadata Service• Based on REST interfaces transporting SAML 2.0 metadata

– Usable by non-eduGAIN components• Metadata are published through POST operations• Metadata are retrieved through GET operations• URLs are built as MDSBaseURL/FederationID/entityID?queryString

– Using component names– The query string transports data intended to locate the appropriate

home BE (Home Locators)• Hints provided by the user• Contents of certificate extensions

(SubjectInformationAccess)

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A Layered Model for Implementation Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Component logic

eduGAINBase + eduGAINVal + eduGAINMeta

SAML toolkit (OpenSAML)

SOAP/TLS/XMLSig libraries

eduGAINBase Profile Access

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateeduGAIN Profiles• Oriented to

– Enable direct federation interaction – Enable services in a confederated environment

• Four profiles discussed so far– WebSSO (Shibboleth browser/POST)– AC (automated cilent: no human interaction)– UbC (user behind non-Web client: use of SASL-CA)– WE (WebSSO enhanced client: delegation)

• Others envisaged– Extended Web SSO (allowing the send of POST data)– eduGAIN usage from roaming clients (DAMe)

• Based on SAML 1.1– Mapping to SAML 2.0 profiles along the transition period

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe AC Profile Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe UbC Profile Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe WE Profile Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe WebSSO Profile Connect. Communicate. Collaborate

Connect. Communicate. CollaborateThe European Way• (Too) many governments, languages, national

priorities/laws/prides/…– A little of weakness, a little of strength

• The will for convergence– Without imposing dramatic inner changes

• Adopt whatever is worth from overseas– With a scent of style and history

• (Humble) model for the rest of the world– We are a little world in itself