Chapter 19 Certificate Authentication Attributes

The Certificate Authentication attributes are organization attributes. The values applied to them under Service Configuration become the default values for the Certificate Authentication template. The service template needs to be created after registering the service for the organization. The default values can be changed after registration by the organization’s administrator. Organization attributes are not inherited by entries in the subtrees of the organization. The Certificate Authentication attributes are:

Match Certificate in LDAP

This option specifies whether to check if the user certificate presented at login is stored in the LDAP Server. If no match is found, the user is denied access. If a match is found and no other validation is required, the user is granted access. The default is that the Certificate Authentication service does not check for the user certificate.



Note	A certificate stored in the Directory Server is not necessarily valid; it may be on the certificate revocation list. See Match Certificate to CRL. However, the web container may check the validity of the user certificate presented at login.

Subject DN Attribute Used to Search LDAP for Certificates

This field specifies the attribute of the certificate’s SubjectDN value that will be used to search LDAP for certificates. This attribute must uniquely identify a user entry. The actual value will be used for the search. The default is CN.

Match Certificate to CRL

This option specifies whether to compare the user certificate against the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) in the LDAP Server. The CRL is located by one of the attribute names in the issuer’s SubjectDN. If the certificate is on the CRL, the user is denied access; if not, the user is allowed to proceed. This attribute is, by default, not enabled.



Note	Certificates should be revoked when the owner of the certificate has changed status and no longer has the right to use the certificate or when the private key of a certificate owner has been compromised.

Issuer DN Attribute Used to Search LDAP for CRLs

This field specifies the attribute of the received certificate’s issuer subjectDN value that will be used to search LDAP for CRLs. This field is used only when the Match Certificate to CRL attribute is enabled. The actual value will be used for the search. The default is CN.

HTTP Parameters for CRL Update

This fields specifies the HTTP parameters f for obtaining a CRL from a servlet for a CRL update. Contact the administrator of your CA for these parameters.

Enable OCSP Validation

This parameter enables OCSP validation to be performed by contacting the corresponding OCSP responder. The OCSP responder is decided as follows during runtime:

If com.sun.identity.authentication.ocspCheck is true and the OCSP responder is set in the com.sun.identity.authentication.ocsp.repsonder.url attribute, the value of the attribute will be used as the OCSP responder.

If com.sun.identity.authentication.ocspCheck is set to true and If the value of the attribute is not set in the AMConfig.properties file, the OCSP responder presented in your client certificate is used as the OCSP responder.

If com.sun.identity.authentication.ocspCheck is set to false or if com.sum.identity.authentication.ocspCheck is set to true and if an OCSP responder can not be found, no OCSP validation will be performed.



Note	Before enabling OCSP Validation, make sure that the time of the Identity Server machine and the OCSP responder machine are in sync as close as possible. Also, the time on the Identity Server machine must not be behind the time on the OCSP responder. For example: OCSP responder machine - 12:00:00 pm Identity Server machine - 12:00:30 pm

LDAP Server Where Certificates Are Stored

This field specifies the name and port number of the LDAP server where the certificates are stored. The default value is the host name and port specified when Identity Server was installed. The host name and port of any LDAP Server where the certificates are stored can be used. The format is hostname:port.

LDAP Start Search DN

This field specifies the DN of the node where the search for the user’s certificate should start. There is no default value. The field will recognize any valid DN. Multiple entries must be prefixed by the local server name. The format is as follows:

LDAP Server Principal User

This field accepts the DN of the principal user (usually Directory Manager) for the LDAP server where the certificates are stored. There is no default value for this field which will recognize any valid DN. The principal user must be authorized to read, and search certificate information stored in the Directory Server.

LDAP Server Principal Password

This field carries the LDAP password associated with the user specified in the LDAP Server Principal User field. There is no default value for this field which will recognize the valid LDAP password for the specified principal user.



Note	This value is stored as readable text in the directory.

LDAP Attribute for Profile ID

This field specifies the attribute in the Directory Server entry that matches the certificate whose value should be used to identify the correct user profile. There is no default value for this field which will recognize any valid attribute in a user entry (cn, sn, and so on) that can be used as the user ID.

Use SSL for LDAP Access

This option specifies whether to use SSL to access the LDAP server. The default is that the Certificate Authentication service does not use SSL for LDAP access.

Certificate Field Used to Access User Profile

This menu specifies which field in the certificate’s Subject DN should be used to search for a matching user profile. For example, if you choose email address, the certificate authentication service will search for the user profile that matches the attribute emailAddr in the user certificate. The user logging in then uses the matched profile. The default field is subject CN. The list contains:

Other Certificate Field Used to Access User Profile

If the value of the Certificate Field Used to Access User Profile attribute is set to other, then this field specifies the attribute that will be selected from the received certificate’s subjectDN value. The authentication service will then search the user profile that matches the value of that attribute.

Trusted Remote Hosts

This attribute defines a list of trusted hosts that can be trusted to send certificates to Identity Server. Identity Server must verify whether the certificate emanated from one of these hosts. This configuration only used with Sun Java System Portal Server.

none. This attribute is disabled. This is set by default.

any. Accepts Portal Server Gateway-style certificate authentication from any client IP address.

IP ADDR. Lists the IP addresses from which to accept Portal Server Gateway-style certificate authentication requests (the IP Address of the Gateway(s)). The attribute is configurable on an organization basis.

SSL Port Number

This attribute specifies the port number for the secure socket layer. Currently, this attribute is only used by the Gateway servlet. Before you add or change an SSL Port Number, see the “Policy-Based Resource Management “section in Chapter 7 of the Identity Server Developer’s Guide.

Authentication Level

The authentication level is set separately for each method of authentication. The value indicates how much to trust an authentication. Once a user has authenticated, this value is stored in the SSO token for the session. When the SSO token is presented to an application the user wants to access, the application uses the stored value to determine whether the level is sufficient to grant the user access. If the authentication level stored in an SSO token does not meet the minimum value required, the application can prompt the user to authenticate again through a service with a higher authentication level. The default value is 0.



Note	If no authentication level is specified, the SSO token stores the value specified in the Core Authentication attribute Default Auth Level. See “Default Authentication Level” on page 258 for details. For the 2004Q2 release, this feature does not function properly. In previous releases, however, it does.

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Sun Java System Identity Server 2004Q2 Administration Guide