Apache Fortress Authentication

Services connected to CAS can use Apache Fortress to handle the authentication and authorization with Apache Fortress. The idea of this is because Apache Fortress does not have any SSO mechanism. However, Apache Fortress is complied for ANSI INCITS 359 RBAC.
See this link for background and history.

Usage

This feature is deprecated and is scheduled to be removed in the future.

Overview

The following diagram is a typical CAS deployment integrated with Apache Fortress:

In the above diagram, CAS will delegate the authentication to Fortress on behalf the Fortress admin user, which is configured in the fortress.properties file. CAS automatically search for this file (assuming classpath) and constructs an access manager component with the admin user as the default communication user to fortress.

To enable this feature, ensure Apache Fortress is installed.

Next include the following module in the WAR overlay:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apereo.cas</groupId>
    <artifactId>cas-server-support-fortress</artifactId>
    <version>${cas.version}</version>
</dependency>

implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-fortress:${project.'cas.version'}"

dependencyManagement {
    imports {
        mavenBom "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-bom:${project.'cas.version'}"
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-fortress"
}

dependencies {
    /*
    The following platform references should be included automatically and are listed here for reference only.
            
    implementation enforcedPlatform("org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-bom:${project.'cas.version'}")
    implementation platform(org.springframework.boot.gradle.plugin.SpringBootPlugin.BOM_COORDINATES)
    */

    implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-fortress"
}

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.}

cas.authn.fortress.rbaccontext=HOME

Use this setting to set the tenant id onto function call into Fortress which allows segregation of data by customer. The context is used for multi-tenancy to isolate data sets within a particular sub-tree within DIT. Setting contextId into this object will render this class' implementer thread unsafe.

org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.fortress.FortressAuthenticationProperties.

_{How can I configure this property?}

Configuration properties can be included and activated using the following strategies.

:information_source: Note

When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value. The only possible exception to this rule is when naming actuator endpoints; The name of the actuator endpoints (i.e. ssoSessions) MUST remain in camelCase mode.

CAS properties can be specified using the Java configuration property syntax in any and all .properties files:

cas.authn.fortress.rbaccontext=HOME

This is the most common form of property configuration that is recognized by CAS, regardless of the actual property source, which might in fact be managed separately outside the CAS environment, by another system or cloud framework.

CAS properties can be specified using the YAML syntax:

cas: 
  authn: 
    fortress: 
      rbaccontext: "HOME"

Note that YAML is very specific about structure and indentation. Be sure to verify the correctness of the final result with your YAML validator of choice.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as system properties, when the application is launched:

java -Dcas.authn.fortress.rbaccontext="HOME" -jar build/libs/cas.war

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory. Note the placement of the system property which must be specified before the CAS web application is launched.

CAS properties can specified as system environment variables before the CAS web application is launched:

export CAS_AUTHN_FORTRESS_RBACCONTEXT="HOME"

java -jar build/libs/cas.war

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as command-line arguments, when the application is launched:

java -jar build/libs/cas.war --cas.authn.fortress.rbaccontext="HOME"

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.

Deprecation status is ERRORwithout a replacement setting.

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This
flag indicates that the presence of the setting
is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or
the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value. You should only include this field in your
configuration if you need to modify the default value.}

Configuration Metadata

The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

Be Selective

This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

YAGNI

Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

Naming Convention

Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc.

Settings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

Validation

Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

Indexed Settings

CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

At this time, Apache Fortress support is limited to Apache Tomcat as the web container. Support for additional containers such as Jetty will be worked out in future releases.

CAS Configuration

Configure fortress.properties file and put it under your $TOMCAT_HOME/lib or you can append your own classpath configuration. An example configuration file follows:

http.user=fortress-super-user
http.pw=verysecretpassword
http.host=localhost
http.port=8080
http.protocol=http

Put Fortress Realm Proxy under your $TOMCAT_HOME/lib.
Add -Dversion=<your.fortress.version> to JAVA_OPTS or CATALINA_OPTS.

Client Configuration

The fortress session is stored as a principal attribute fortressSession. As the client you need to extract this key in order to get Session in xml form. With Fortress session later you can get the roles or get the permission dynamically by calling fortress rest.