Authentication Events

CAS provides a facility for consuming and recording authentication events into persistent storage. This functionality is similar to the records kept by the Audit log except that the functionality and storage format is controlled via CAS itself rather than the audit engine. Additionally, while audit data may be used for reporting and monitoring, events stored into storage via this functionality may later be assessed in a historical fashion to assess authentication requests, evaluate risk associated with them and take further action upon them. Events are primarily designed to be consumed by the developer and subsequent CAS modules, while audit data is targeted at deployers for end-user functionality and reporting.

Support is enabled by including the following dependency in the WAR overlay:



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





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implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-core-events:${project.'cas.version'}"





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

dependencies {
    implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-core-events"
}





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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-core-events"
}

To learn how to configure database drivers, please see this guide.

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.

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.events.core.enabled=true

    • Whether event tracking and recording functionality should be enabled.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.events.CoreEventsProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.events.core.track-configuration-modifications=false

    • Whether CAS should track the underlying configuration store for changes. This depends on whether the store provides that sort of functionality. When running in standalone mode, this typically translates to CAS monitoring configuration files and reloading context conditionally if there are any changes.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.events.CoreEventsProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.events.core.track-geolocation=false

    • Whether geolocation should be tracked as part of collected authentication events. This of course requires consent from the user's browser to collect stats on location. Turning on this setting would prompt the browser to ask for user's consent to collect geo location directly. If geo location information is not available using this strategy, it may still be extracted and determined based on the client IP address at the time the event is being recorded and captured by CAS.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.events.CoreEventsProperties.

    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.

    Recorded Data

    The following metadata is captured and recorded by the event machinery when enabled:

    Field Description
    principalId The principal id of the authenticated subject
    timestamp Timestamp of this event
    creationTime Timestamp of this authentication event
    clientIpAddress Client IP address
    serverIpAddress Server IP address
    agent User-Agent of the browser
    geoLatitude Geo Latitude of authentication request’s origin
    geoLongitude Geo Longitude of authentication request’s origin
    geoAccuracy Accuracy measure of the location
    geoTimestamp Timestamp of the geo location request

    GeoLocation

    CAS attempts to record the geolocation properties of the authentication requests, by allowing the browser to ask for user’s consent. Should consent not be granted or geolocation not supported by the browser, CAS will ignore the geolocation data when it attempts to record the event. To learn more, please review this guide.

    Actuator Endpoints

    The following endpoints are provided by CAS:

     Delete all CAS events in the event repository.

     Provide a report of CAS events in the event repository.

     Upload CAS events and store them into the event repository.


    Storage

    The following options may be used to store events in CAS.

    Storage Description
    MongoDb See this guide.
    DynamoDb See this guide.
    Redis See this guide.
    JPA See this guide.
    InfluxDb See this guide.
    Memory See this guide.