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OpenConext-DIY

Creating an IdP to attach to a SAML consuming authentication service is a simple, yet common task that can be easily automated.

This project has the following deployment goals:

  • installation of SimpleSAMLphp
  • configuration of a set of well-known logins for testing purposes
  • configuration of LetsEncrypt for deployments with public internet access

SimpleSAMLphp

From the SimpleSAMLphp website:

SimpleSAMLphp is an award-winning application written in native PHP that deals with authentication.
The project is led by UNINETT, has a large user base, a helpful user community and a large set of
external contributors. The main focus of SimpleSAMLphp is providing support for SAML 2.0 as a
Service Provider (SP) and/or SAML 2.0 as an Identity Provider (IdP)

The final product of this project is a complete SimpleSAMLphp IdP installation that uses the 'example-auth' module to allow login using a set of well-known logins as defined on:

https://diy-idp.pilots.aarc-project.eu/simplesaml/showusers.php

These users combine a diverse set of unicode characters and entity definitions usable in testing the proper implementations of SAML consuming service providers. The configuration of these users is present inside the SimpleSAMLphp installation in a JSON encoded file called: simplesamlphp/config/logins.json, which is copied from the ansible deployment to its final destination upon provisioning. The original file can be found in the group_vars directory:

group_vars/logins.json

You can add additional users and attributes to this file and (re)provision the IdP.

The final product is a single-server installation and not useable in production environments.

Setup

The provisioning script was developed for deployment to an Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (16.04 LTS) installation. Due to the requirement of python for Ansible, the basic installation requires installation of at least the python package:

sudo apt-get install python

Instead of installing python, you can use the default python3 installation by supplying an ansible configuration

--extra-vars "ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3"

All other required packages are installed automatically.

The installation will use the default PHP version (7.1). You can make this work for other versions as well (PHP5.6 for example) by adjusting the package requirements in the common role. Some tweaking may apply in the apache role as well to get the right modules enabled.

Configuration

The basic configuration options are available in the group_vars/idp.yml file. More options are available for each of the roles, see the default variable definitions of these roles.

Basic options are:

Basic Site Information These define the basic FQDN hostname of the target installation and the SAML consuming service linked by default to this IdP.

# Site information
idp_hostname: idp.example.org
idp_sp: https://sp.example.org

SimpleSaml These configuration values determine the basic SimpleSAMLphp installation. The SimpleSAMLphp salt is created dynamically and will change on redeployment.

ssp_version: 1.15.4
ssp_hostname: "{{ idp_hostname }}"
ssp_subject: "{{ cert_subject }}"
ssp_days_valid: "{{ cert_days_valid }}"
ssp_key: "{{ idp_hostname }}.pem"
ssp_certificate: "{{ idp_hostname }}.crt"
ssp_auth_admin_password: "changethispassword"
ssp_technicalcontact_name: Contact
ssp_technicalcontact_email: postmaster@{{ idp_hostname }}
ssp_managingcontact_name: Manager
ssp_managingcontact_email: webmaster@{{ idp_hostname }}
ssp_sp_metadata: "{{ idp_sp }}/authentication/sp/metadata"
ssp_sp_consumer: "{{ idp_sp }}/authentication/sp/consume-assertion"
ssp_title_suffix: "OpenConext-DIY"

The 'ssp_title_suffix' option allows differentiating between various default SimpleSaml installations. Comment this option out to disable generating the header suffix.

Certificates By default, the hostname for the certificate is the same as that of the installation. The certificate subject is only the hostname and does not contain specific information. This only concerns the self-signed certificate for a deployment to a private host, so has no real world implications. cert_hostname: "{{ idp_hostname }}" cert_subject: "/CN={{ cert_hostname }}"

Default configuration variables for the letsencrypt role. This role is based on the LetsEncrypt ansible playbook by Jason Robinson: ansible-letsencrypt, Copyright (c) 2017 Jason Robinson.

letsencrypt_email: idp@example.org
letsencrypt_domain: "{{ idp_hostname }}"
letsencrypt_request_www: false

A self-signed certificate for SimpleSAMLphp is created automatically, using the same variables by default as defined for the self-signed certificate of the HTTPS/SSL configuration. The following configuration values determine the basic installation directory of the SimpleSAMLphp website on the host target. These are Apache site configuration settings.

ssl_hostname: "{{ idp_hostname }}"
ssl_webmaster: "webmaster@{{ ssl_hostname }}"
ssl_docroot: "{{ ssp_dir }}/www"

Provisioning

After adjusting all relevant configuration values in group_vars/idp.yml, the Ansible inventory file needs to be populated. The inventory file defines a group idp of which all target machines are a member. The target machine IP address is defined at the top of that inventory file.

Then provision the application by running:

ansible-playbook -i inventory openconext-diy.yml

or

ansible-playbook -i inventory openconext-diy.yml --extra-vars "ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3"

During provisioning, the roles and tasks will:

  • try to find out if the target machine has a publicly accessible network address
  • if so, a LetsEncrypt certificate is requested automatically and configured
  • if not, a self-signed certificate is configured for SSL
  • SimpleSAMLphp salt and certificate are generated on the fly
  • HTTP traffic is redirected to HTTPS for SimpleSAMLphp
  • only the SimpleSAMLphp site is enabled, the default sites (default and 000-default) are disabled

After provisioning, the metadata is available at:

https://{{ idp_hostname }}/saml2/idp/metadata.php

You can use this link to configure service providers to accept this IdP.

Ansible version 2.5 or later is required.

Vagrant

A Vagrantfile is provided for easy vagrant provisioning. Please adjust any overrides for the default group_var/idp.yml configuration in that file. Due to a problem with the network interface names in Ubuntu 15.10, 16.04, 16.10 and (presumably) later versions, the vagrant up command will fail on network enabling. However, the box is provisioned (as far as vagrant is concerned) correctly nonetheless. Run the following commands:

vagrant up
vagrant provision

to get the vagrant machine up and running. The VagrantFile uses the VirtualBox provider by default.

Docker

A basic Dockerfile is available to install this IdP on a Docker container. Due to Docker networking configuration and setup, this installation knows neither hostname nor IP address, so additional configuration after provisioning is required.

The Dockerfile mounts the SimpleSAML metadata directory. In the docker-run script file, the Docker image is build and the run command mounts the local docker/metadata directory to the container, allowing local edits to appear in the container metadata. You can use this as a starting point for configuring and running your own containers.

Disclaimer

The resulting installation is provided as-is and should not be used for anything other than test purposes. The SimpleSAMLphp installation, Apache configuration and system firewall were not hardened for production use in any way and using the result for real life production circumstances is strongly discouraged.