Configuration

Access the settings.xml file in your distribution under the config folder.

1. Add the following element (if not present):

<authentication>
  <type>None</type>
</authentication>

2. Change the authentication type based on your needs. Currently, there are three options:

1. None
   • No security is used. Access to the administration pages is unrestricted.
2. ConfigFile
   • Access to the administration pages is restricted. There are two default users: "admin" and "developer". These users are able to access the administration pages after successfully entering a password that is configured in the top level application properties (inside the properties section) of the setting settings file.
3. LDAPLdap
   • Access to the administration pages is restricted. Aspire is configured to connect to an LDAP or Active Directory (AD) server. Users can access the administration pages after being successfully validated by the LDAP /or AD server.
   • Access to the administration pages can be further restricted to only users that are members of a specific LDAP /or AD group, which can be configured to any of the roles role (Administrator or Developer).
     

ConfigFile Authentication - Set Up a Password

When using ConfigFile authentication, you must set the up a password that the admin & developer Administrator  or Developer user will be validated against. The password to match is set in the system properties in the settings file in the adminPassword & developerPassword properties. An example is shown below:

<!-- System properties -->
<properties>
  <property name="adminPassword">insecure_admin_plain_password</property>
  <property name="developerPassword">insecure_developer_plain_password</property>
</properties>

LDAP Authentication - Configuration

When LDAP authentication is selected, you must extend the authentication section to provide the LDAP server to authenticate with. By default, group based access is disabled, meaning that any user who is able to authenticate with the given LDAP server will be able to access the Aspire administration pages as a "Developer".

To turn enable group based access on, you must further extend your configuration, adding a distinguished name (dn) for each of the groups that controls access, an ldap LDAP query that will allow Aspire to establish the distinguished name (dn) of the user attempting log on from the user name they provided, the name of the attribute that holds the user to group membership information and an indicator as to whether that information is held in the user object or in the group object.

User specifc access is also available by extending the configuration, you can add one or more specific users.

You can configure any number of users and/or groups for the "Administrator" or "Developer" roles.

LDAP

Configuration Parameters

The following parameters may be used when configuring LDAP authentication:

^* Mandatory

Group

Based Access Control

When group based access control is disabled, a simple validation of the credentials supplied by the user is all that is required to allow access to the Admin UI, and the user will be granted "Developer" role permissions. Adding the dn of a group in to the configuration will enable group based access control and, following a successful validation of credentials, the ldap LDAP server is queried to see if the user belongs to the desired group. Two slightly different approaches are used depending on the setting of the groupsHoldMembers flag.

By default, groupsHoldMembers is disabled. In this configuration, Aspire queries the ldap LDAP server to get the user object using the query specified in the userDNQuery parameter. Once the user object has been found, the membership attribute (configured by the memberAttr parameter) is extracted and the values of this attribute are checked. If one is equal to the adminGroupDN or devGroupDN groups from the configuration, the user belongs to the group and is granted access. Otherwise access is denied.

When groupsHoldMembers is enabled, Aspire again searches ldap LDAP for the user object. It then gets the membership attribute (configured by the memberAttr) parameter from the group (using the dn configured in the adminGroupDN or devGroupDN parameter) and looks for the dn of the user object. If found, the user belongs to the group and access is granted.

User

Specific Access Control

Sometimes it is simpler to grant access to certain specific users instead of granting access to a whole group, for doing this . In this case, the adminUserDN and devUserDN properties should be used. They should contain the distinguish distinguished name (dn) of each one the users to allow access with either "Administrator" or "Developer" roles.

The user specific access can be used combined with the group based access control.

The

User DN Query

Anchor
dnQuery dnQuery

When a user logs in to the user interface, they are first validated against ldap the LDAP server using the username and password they supplied. If group based access control is disabled, no further checks are performed and the user is granted access (assuming their username and password are valid). If group based access control is enabled, following a successful validation by the ldap LDAP server, Aspire then needs to establish the distinguished name of the user who logged on in order to work out determine if the user is in the appropriate group.

The dn of the user is found by performing a query in ldap LDAP for the user, based on the user name used to login. The query entered in the configuration may contain ‘parameters’ that are then substituted. The following parameters are available:

Parameters are entered in the query by enclosing them in curly braces {}. For example, (&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username})) would become (&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName=Administrator)), if the user logged in with either domain\Administrator or Administrator.

Example

Configuration for LDAP

Access Control

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any valid LDAP user to log in to the Aspire interface.

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
  </ldap>
</authentication>

Example

Configuration for LDAP

Group Access Control

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any validated LDAP user who is a member of the group with the distinguished nane CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local to log in to the Aspire interface with "Administrator" role and the CN=Developers, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local  dn for the "Developer" role. In this configuration, once the user is validated, the userDNquery is used to locate the user object under the search base. The values of the attribute configured in the memberAttr parameter (default memberOf) are checked against the adminGroupDN  and devGroupDN values and if it is found, the user is granted access according to the specified role.

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
    <searchBase>dc=qa, dc=local</searchBase>
    <userDNQuery><![CDATA[(&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username}))]]></userDNQuery>
    <adminGroupDN>CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</adminGroupDN>
    <devGroupDN>CN=Developers, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</devGroupDN>
  </ldap>
</authentication>

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any valid LDAP user who is a member of the group with dn CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local to log in to the Aspire interface. In this configuration, the membership information is taken from group object (due to the groupsHoldMembers flag). In this case, once the user is validated, the userDNquery is used to locate the user object under the search base and establish the user's distinguished name (dn). Next, the group object is retrieved using its distinguished name (from the adminGroupDN and devGroupDN parameters). The values of the attribute configured in the memberAttr parameter (default memberOf) are checked against the user's dn and if found, the user is granted access.

On In the following example, we also have two more additional parameters: adminUserDN and devUserDN containing the DN of users that doesn't do not belong to either the Developers or Administrators groups on LDAP, but they are still granted access according to its role:

• jdoe will be granted access as "Administrator" role even though it doesn't belong to "CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local"
• aeinstein will be granted access as "Developer" role even though it doesn't belong to "CN=Developers, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local" either

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
    <searchBase>dc=qa, dc=local</searchBase>
    <userDNQuery><![CDATA[(&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username}))]]></userDNQuery>
    <adminGroupDN>CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</adminGroupDN>
    <devGroupDN>CN=Developers, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</devGroupDN>
    <adminUserDN>UID=jdoe, CN=SomeOtherGroup, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</adminUserDN>
    <devUserDN>UID=aeinsten, CN=SomeOtherGroup, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</devUserDN>
    <groupsHoldMembers>true</groupsHoldMembers>
    <memberAttr>member</memberAttr>
  </ldap>
</authentication>