[Freeipa-users] Freeipa-users] Overall Design of Policy Related Components

[Rodney Mercer]

On Tue, 2011-11-01 at 20:57 -0400, Dmitri Pal wrote:
> On 11/01/2011 01:04 PM, Rodney Mercer wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-11-01 at 12:00 -0400, freeipa-users-request at redhat.com
> > wrote:
> >> On 10/31/2011 05:20 PM, Rodney Mercer wrote:
> >>> We have previously developed Solaris RBAC authorization within our
> >>> application to validate users and roles to our application's
> >> internal
> >>> commanding capability using the definitions that populate the name
> >>> service switch maps. 
> >>>
> >>> I have been searching for a method for implementing similar
> >> capability
> >>> using RHEL and had found promise with the following proposed
> >>> documentation for IPAv2:
> >> We decided to back away from trying to provide central RBAC. Our
> >> experience with multiple projects revealed that there is no one size
> >> fits all solution regarding RBAC. But we were talking about geral Role
> >> base access control model not specific RBAC as Solaris implemented it.
> >> The Solaris RBAC is similar to sudo and HBAC combined together. Both
> >> features are managed by IPA.
> >> We also have SELinux policies on Linux that can constrain the root
> >> access. The user SELinux roles management is on the roadmap but HBAC +
> >> SUDO should give you the equivalent if not more functionality than
> >> Solaris RBAC.
> >> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/15/html/FreeIPA_Guide/index.html
> >>
> >> Or you can use RHEL6.2 beta and see the docs about SUDO and HBAC
> >> there.
> > The RBAC structure that I speak of is contained within our application. 
> > Being able to have IPA clients request the XML blob of role mappings to
> > internal application commanding authorizations is what I was looking
> > for.
> >
> > Is it possible to create IPA Roles that mean nothing to IPA yet our
> > independent application could query and use them with it's internal
> > security mechanisms? 
> >
> > Could extending the dirsrv schema to include attributes to be accessed
> > for the security of the independent application be created to work in
> > conjunction with these custom defined roles?
> >  
> > Having the IPA Server available to all hosts that run the application is
> > what we desire. We use *_attr Name Service Switch maps to access these
> > roles and attributes from our Solaris implementation. 
> >
> > Unless I am mistaken, HBAC might give us options as to whom may run our
> > applications on particular hosts, but it would not help in defining who
> > could run the internal application directives that we seek to map to
> > users roles.
> > Sudo doesn't help for the internal commanding our application desires to
> > control.
> >
> > Thanks for any ideas you can lend.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Rodney.
> >
> 
> Rodney,
> 
> I have read other responses too but reply to your clarification. It now
> makes more sense.
> 
> I think that best approach would be to store this data in the special
> part of the tree and develop plugins for manage it.
> Would you be interested in investing in such an effort?
> If so I would go dig some of the designs and ideas and share them with
> you and everybody else. I think they were ubandoned before shaping up
> will enough to have a discussion on the list.
> I think we proposed some schema for storing Roles and related XML blobs.
> We are also working on the extensibility guide so it will be a perfect
> opportunity to test it out.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
Dmitri,

I have been searching for some time for an elegant solution to our
problem of porting this application RBAC configuration to RHEL from the
proprietary Solaris platform solution that we currently have. 

I think that this is something that would benefit others that currently
employee Solaris *_attr NSS maps for roles to migrate to an RHEL IPA
solution.

That said, I will need to have our management assign a developer to this
effort. I think that is important to them as the requirements to
implement application RBAC to our product on RHEL is imminent. 

I also think that employing IPA as a solution for our application
running on other POSIX operating systems to take advantage of this
proposed schema would be advantageous to us and others.

I will respond to you as to resources as soon as I know more.

-- 
Rodney Mercer
Systems Administrator