Searching for Central Authentication Service

We are  searching for CAS (Central Authentication Service) for a project .

The Central Authentication Service (CAS) is a single sign-on protocol for the web. Its purpose is to permit a user to access multiple applications while providing their credentials (such as userid and password) only once. It also allows web applications to authenticate users without gaining access to a user’s security credentials, such as a password

We are evaluating CAS solution from:

• jasig

• Shibboleth

In this post I’ll try to explain how to get jasig CAS up and running.I’m assuming that all CAS related programs will be in /opt/CAS , if you need them in other location you will have to slightly adjust the paths.

To get it up and running you will need:

• Apache maven (http://maven.apache.org/). I used version 3.0.5 ( latest at the time of the post writing ) . Instalation of apache maven is straight forward .

mkdir -p /opt/CAS
cd /opt/CAS
wget http://mirrors.hostingromania.ro/apache.org/maven/maven-3/3.0.5/binaries/apache-maven-3.0.5-bin.tar.gz
tar xf apache-maven-3.0.5-bin.tar.gz
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/CAS/apache-maven-3.0.5/bin

• Apache tomcat(http://tomcat.apache.org/). Again I used version 7.0.41

cd /opt/CAS
wget http://mirrors.hostingromania.ro/apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.41/bin/apache-tomcat-7.0.41.tar.gz
tar xf apache-tomcat-7.0.41.tar.gz

• jasig CAS software (http://www.jasig.org/cas) . We used 3.5.2 release of the software.

cd /opt/CAS
wget http://downloads.jasig.org/cas/cas-server-3.5.2-release.tar.gz
tar xf cas-server-3.5.2-release.tar.gz

• Mysql Java Connector software (http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.25.tar.gz/from/http://cdn.mysql.com/) . We used 5.1.25 release of the software.

cd /opt/CAS
wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.25.tar.gz
tar xf mysql-connector-java-5.1.25.tar.gz

Now we have everything we need for the build. Let’s start configure it

Edit the file: cas-server-3.5.2/cas-server-webapp/pom.xml

And change commons-dbcp version from 1.2.2 to 1.4 . Otherwise the CAS will give some obscure null errors after startup. After athat add the following:

<dependency>
 <groupId>mysql</groupId>
 <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
 <version>5.1.25-bin</version>
 <scope>provided</scope>
 </dependency>

Edit the file cas-server-3.5.2/cas-server-webapp/target/cas-server-webapp-3.5.2/WEB-INF/deployerConfigContext.xml and add the following ( required for mysql support and changed default demo authentication to mysql auth)

<!--                <bean
 class="org.jasig.cas.authentication.handler.support.SimpleTestUsernamePasswordAuthenticationHandler" />
 -->

<bean class="org.jasig.cas.adaptors.jdbc.SearchModeSearchDatabaseAuthenticationHandler">
 <property  name="tableUsers">
 <value>users</value>
 </property>
 <property name="fieldUser">
 <value>username</value>
 </property>
 <property name="fieldPassword">
 <value>password</value>
 </property>
 <property name="passwordEncoder">
 <bean class="org.jasig.cas.authentication.handler.DefaultPasswordEncoder">
 <constructor-arg value="MD5" />
 </bean>
 </property>
 <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
 </bean>

And at the end of file before /beans add the mysql configuration:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource">
 <property name="driverClassName">
 <value>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</value>
 </property>
 <property name="url">
 <value>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/cas</value> <!-- Replace this line with the database containing the users table -->
 </property>
 <property name="username">
 <value>REPLACE_ME</value> <!-- Replace this line with the MySQL username -->
 </property>
 <property name="password">
 <value>REPLACE_ME</value> <!-- Replace this line with the actual MySQL password -->
 </property>
 </bean>

On your mysql server create the database and table where the users will be kept and insert a test user :

create database cas;
 grant all on cas.* to REPLACE_ME@127.0.0.1 identified by 'REPLACE_ME';
 CREATE TABLE users (username char(20) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, password char(64));
 INSERT INTO users(username, password) VALUES ('Test44',MD5('passTest'));

Now the building part:

1. First install mysql connector

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=mysql -DartifactId=mysql-connector-java -Dversion=5.1.25-bin -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=../../mysql-connector-java-5.1.25/mysql-connector-java-5.1.25-bin.jar

2. Next build the war file

mvn package install

Install the package into tomcat directoy:

cp cas-server-3.5.2/cas-server-webapp/target/cas.war /opt/CAS/apache-tomcat-7.0.41/webapps

And after this restart your tomcat and point a browser to http://localhost:8080/cas  and you should have a CAS instance up and running.

Things to test from this point forward:

1. Test custom table structure
2. Configure tomcat for SSL
3. How to add custom password encryption
4. How to add custom SQL auth string
5. Attribute releasing from database
6. Integration with a website
7. Facebook login , oAuth login