GCube Security Model
This page describes the security model adopted in the DILIGENT infrastructure
Contents
Authentication Model
The DILIGENT Security uses Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) mechanisms to authenticate identities acting in the infrastructure. Each authenticated invocation must be performed using valid credentials issued by a trusted Certification Authority. To speed up performances of some services unauthenticated invocatons are also allowed, even if not planned in the design of DILIGENT security. These invocations can be performed without any credentials, neither authentication nor authorization is enforced in these cases.
Authentication Mechanism
The mechanism used in DILIGENT to authenticate service invocatons is the WS-SecureConversation one. The Java WS-Core container provides a built-in implementation of this standard called GSI-SecureConversation.
This choice is driven by the need to delegate caller credentials to invoked services. The HTTPS mechanism (also available in the Java-WS-Core) cannot interoperate with the GSI-SecureConversation one, thus preventing the exploiting of both mechanisms in the DILIGENT infrastructure. For this reason the HTTPS mechanism has been discarded.
The DL context
Service invocations in the DILIGENT infrastructure are performed in a context