Adaptive Authentication - IP Intelligence

CAS provides you with the capability to examine the client IP address and decide whether access should be granted. This may be useful to detect bot, proxy or VPN traffic and protect your deployment from fraud, automated attacks, crawlers, etc.

The result of the IP address examination may either ban and request the request, allow it to go through, or present a score to indicate the probability of an IP address that may be questionable. If the result is ranked score, it will be compared against the configured risk threshold to determine whether the request may proceed.

Banned IP address can either be defined as patterns in the CAS settings, or they may be examined using the listed strategies below.

  • The client IP address is submitted to a REST endpoint as the header clientIpAddress under a GET request. The expected result status codes are the following:

    Code Description
    401, 403 IP address is banned and the request will be rejected.
    200, 202 IP address is allowed and the request may proceed.
    All Others Response body is expected to contain a score between 1 and 0, (1=Banned and 0=Allowed).

    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.adaptive.ip-intel.rest.url=

    • The endpoint URL to contact and retrieve attributes.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.RestfulAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

    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. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.rest.basic-auth-password=

    • If REST endpoint is protected via basic authentication, specify the password for authentication.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.RestfulAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.rest.basic-auth-username=

    • If REST endpoint is protected via basic authentication, specify the username for authentication.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.RestfulAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.rest.headers=

    • Headers, defined as a Map, to include in the request when making the REST call. Will overwrite any header that CAS is pre-defined to send and include in the request. Key in the map should be the header name and the value in the map should be the header value.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.RestfulAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.rest.method=GET

    • HTTP method to use when contacting the rest endpoint. Examples include GET, POST, etc.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.RestfulAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

    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.

    :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.

    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. 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.

  • The client IP address may be examined using a Groovy script whose outline should match the following:

    

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    import org.apereo.cas.authentication.principal.*
import org.apereo.cas.authentication.*
import org.apereo.cas.util.*
import org.apereo.cas.authentication.adaptive.intel.*

def run(Object[] args) {
    def (requestContext,clientIpAddress,logger) = args
    
    logger.info("Client ip address provided is ${clientIpAddress}")
    
    if (ipAddressIsRejected())
        return IPAddressIntelligenceResponse.banned()
    
    return IPAddressIntelligenceResponse.allowed()
}

    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.adaptive.ip-intel.groovy.location=

    • The location of the resource. Resources can be URLs, or files found either on the classpath or outside somewhere in the file system.

    In the event the configured resource is a Groovy script, specially if the script set to reload on changes, you may need to adjust the total number of inotify instances. On Linux, you may need to add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf: fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 256.

    You can check the current value via cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances.

    In situations and scenarios where CAS is able to automatically watch the underlying resource for changes and detect updates and modifications dynamically, you may be able to specify the following setting as either an environment variable or system property with a value of false to disable the resource watcher: org.apereo.cas.util.io.PathWatcherService.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.GroovyAdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

    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. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

    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.

    :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.

    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. 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.

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    This is a free service, primarily useful for development, testing and demos. Production deployments of this service require a subscription that can handle the expected query count and load.

    Note that a valid email that is checked frequently must be used in the contact field or else the service might be disabled without notice. Furthermore, DO NOT exceed more than 500 queries per day & 15 queries per minute. See FAQ for further information.

    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.adaptive.ip-intel.black-dot.email-address=

    • Include your contact information so you can be notified if a problem arise or if there are core changes.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.AdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.BlackDot.

    How can I configure this property?

    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. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.black-dot.mode=DYNA_LIST

    • DYNA_LIST: If you get a value between 0 - 1, exclusive (like 0.99, 0.99999, 0.97), these values are generated by dynamic checks which looks for characteristics of the given IP. IPs that are either manually banned or seen on a public proxy site will return a value of 1. If you only want manually banned or public proxies, then in your code just look for the value "1". However, there are many IPs that haven't gone through manual review and IPs can change behavior very frequently (which is why dynamic checks exist in the first place). If you only look for the value of "1", then expect to have more proxy / VPN / bad IPs go through your system, however, false positives are less likely if you use the dynamic ban list option. If you wish to use only manually banned and public proxy IPs, append the parameter flags=m, the system will only return a result of 0 or 1. This option is the best to start off with that will have a noticeable impact in bot / proxy / VPN traffic, especially if you don't have any data sets to test with the system.
    • DYNA_CHECK: In this scenario, you want to use dynamic checks as well but you want to skip additional checks to see if the IP is a bad ip (see What do you mean by "Bad IP"?). In this mode, some bad IPs are still detected but the system does not attempt to go through the full bad IPs check because the time for the extra checks vary wildly (between an extra 200ms to 2 seconds). In this mode, false positives are more likely than dynamic ban lists only. Scores are lower compared to the full IP check (without any flag options) because less attributes are considered. If you wish to use dynamic ban list and dynamic checks only, append the parameter flags=b. This option is the best if dynamic ban lists isn't catching enough IPs but you don't want to run the full check because it takes too long and/or you want to have a predictable execution time.
    • FULL: Let the system to do a full lookup with one query.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.AdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.BlackDot.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.authn.adaptive.ip-intel.black-dot.url=http://check.getipintel.net/check.php?ip=%s

    • URL endpoint of the service to make API calls.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.authentication.AdaptiveAuthenticationIPIntelligenceProperties.BlackDot.

    How can I configure this property?

    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.

    :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.

    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. 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.