Account Selection - Surrogate Authentication

The surrogate user selection can happen via the following ways.

  • This is the case where the surrogate user identity is known beforehand and is provided to CAS upon login using a special syntax. When entering credentials, the following syntax should be used:

    1
    
    [surrogate-userid][separator][primary-userid]
    

    For example, if you are casuser and you need to switch to jsmith as the surrogate user, the credential id provided to CAS would be jsmith+casuser where the separator is + and can be altered via the CAS configuration. You will need to provide your own password of course.

  • This is the case where the surrogate user identity is not known beforehand, and you wish to choose the account from a pre-populated list. When entering credentials, the following syntax should be used:

    1
    
    [separator][primary-userid]
    

    For example, if you are casuser and you need to locate the surrogate account to which you may want to switch, the credential id provided to CAS would be +casuser where the separator is + and can be altered via the CAS configuration. You will need to provide your own password of course.

  • The underlying account store can mark a primary impersonator account with special permissions and privileges to allow it to impersonate any other account. Accounts that are whitelisted and wildcarded in this strategy are not assigned a specific list of authorized impersonatees but instead are able to impersonate any other username without any restrictions or additional checks.

    :warning: Usage Warning

    Be careful with this strategy! Designating an account as a wildcard will disable any and all other checks on the surrogate/impersonatee account and CAS will completely back away from validating and verifying the requested surrogate account.

    To designate an account as a wildcard, the account store must be able to return and provide a list of authorized impersonatee accounts for the primary user with * as the only entry in the list, indicating the primary user is authorized to impersonate anyone. Also, note that account selection using a GUI approach is disabled and turned off for wildcarded accounts. The primary user tagged as a wildcard must begin the impersonation flow using the Preselected approach with a known surrogate user.