                          LDAP Authentication

  Toby Burress

   <kurin@causa-sui.net>

   $FreeBSD:
   release/8.4.0/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/ldap-auth/article.xml 39632
   2012-10-01 11:56:00Z gabor $

   Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 The FreeBSD Documentation Project

   $FreeBSD:
   release/8.4.0/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/ldap-auth/article.xml 39632
   2012-10-01 11:56:00Z gabor $

   FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.

   Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to
   distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those
   designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was
   aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed
   by the "(TM)" or the "(R)" symbol.

   This document is intended as a guide for the configuration of an
   LDAP server (principally an OpenLDAP server) for authentication on
   FreeBSD. This is useful for situations where many servers need the
   same user accounts, for example as a replacement for NIS.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

1 Preface

   This document is intended to give the reader enough of an
   understanding of LDAP to configure an LDAP server. This document
   will attempt to provide an explanation of net/nss_ldap and
   security/pam_ldap for use with client machines services for use
   with the LDAP server.

   When finished, the reader should be able to configure and deploy a
   FreeBSD server that can host an LDAP directory, and to configure
   and deploy a FreeBSD server which can authenticate against an LDAP
   directory.

   This article is not intended to be an exhaustive account of the
   security, robustness, or best practice considerations for
   configuring LDAP or the other services discussed herein. While the
   author takes care to do everything correctly, he does not address
   security issues beyond a general scope. This article should be
   considered to lay the theoretical groundwork only, and any actual
   implementation should be accompanied by careful requirement
   analysis.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

2 Configuring LDAP

   LDAP stands for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol" and is a
   subset of the X.500 Directory Access Protocol. Its most recent
   specifications are in RFC4510 and friends. Essentially it is a
   database that expects to be read from more often than it is
   written to.

   The LDAP server OpenLDAP will be used in the examples in this
   document; while the principles here should be generally applicable
   to many different servers, most of the concrete administration is
   OpenLDAP-specific. There are several server versions in ports, for
   example net/openldap24-server. Client servers will need the
   corresponding net/openldap24-client libraries.

   There are (basically) two areas of the LDAP service which need
   configuration. The first is setting up a server to receive
   connections properly, and the second is adding entries to the
   server's directory so that FreeBSD tools know how to interact with
   it.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  2.1 Setting Up the Server for Connections

     Note: This section is specific to OpenLDAP. If you are using
     another server, you will need to consult that server's
     documentation.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    2.1.1 Installing OpenLDAP

   First, install OpenLDAP:

   Example 1. Installing OpenLDAP

 # cd /usr/ports/net/openldap24-server
 # make install clean

   This installs the slapd and slurpd binaries, along with the
   required OpenLDAP libraries.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    2.1.2 Configuring OpenLDAP

   Next we must configure OpenLDAP.

   You will want to require encryption in your connections to the
   LDAP server; otherwise your users' passwords will be transferred
   in plain text, which is considered insecure. The tools we will be
   using support two very similar kinds of encryption, SSL and TLS.

   TLS stands for "Transportation Layer Security". Services that
   employ TLS tend to connect on the same ports as the same services
   without TLS; thus an SMTP server which supports TLS will listen
   for connections on port 25, and an LDAP server will listen on 389.

   SSL stands for "Secure Sockets Layer", and services that implement
   SSL do not listen on the same ports as their non-SSL counterparts.
   Thus SMTPS listens on port 465 (not 45), HTTPS listens on 443, and
   LDAPS on 636.

   The reason SSL uses a different port than TLS is because a TLS
   connection begins as plain text, and switches to encrypted traffic
   after the STARTTLS directive. SSL connections are encrypted from
   the beginning. Other than that there are no substantial
   differences between the two.

     Note: We will adjust OpenLDAP to use TLS, as SSL is considered
     deprecated.

   Once OpenLDAP is installed via ports, the following configuration
   parameters in /usr/local/etc/openldap/slapd.conf will enable TLS:

 security ssf=128

 TLSCertificateFile /path/to/your/cert.crt
 TLSCertificateKeyFile /path/to/your/cert.key
 TLSCACertificateFile /path/to/your/cacert.crt

   Here, ssf=128 tells OpenLDAP to require 128-bit encryption for all
   connections, both search and update. This parameter may be
   configured based on the security needs of your site, but rarely
   you need to weaken it, as most LDAP client libraries support
   strong encryption.

   The cert.crt, cert.key, and cacert.crt files are necessary for
   clients to authenticate you as the valid LDAP server. If you
   simply want a server that runs, you can create a self-signed
   certificate with OpenSSL:

   Example 2. Generating an RSA key

 % openssl genrsa -out cert.key 1024
 Generating RSA private key, 1024 bit long modulus
 ....................++++++
 ...++++++
 e is 65537 (0x10001)
 % openssl req -new -key cert.key -out cert.csr

   At this point you should be prompted for some values. You may
   enter whatever values you like; however, it is important the
   "Common Name" value be the fully qualified domain name of the
   OpenLDAP server. In our case, and the examples here, the server is
   server.example.org. Incorrectly setting this value will cause
   clients to fail when making connections. This can the cause of
   great frustration, so ensure that you follow these steps closely.

   Finally, the certificate signing request needs to be signed:

   Example 3. Self-signing the certificate

 % openssl x509 -req -in cert.csr -days 365 -signkey cert.key -out cert.crt
 Signature ok
 subject=/C=AU/ST=Some-State/O=Internet Widgits Pty Ltd
 Getting Private key

   This will create a self-signed certificate that can be used for
   the directives in slapd.conf, where cert.crt and cacert.crt are
   the same file. If you are going to use many OpenLDAP servers (for
   replication via slurpd) you will want to see Appendix B to
   generate a CA key and use it to sign individual server
   certificates.

   Once this is done, put the following in /etc/rc.conf:

 slapd_enable="YES"

   Then run /usr/local/etc/rc.d/slapd start. This should start
   OpenLDAP. Confirm that it is listening on 389 with

 % sockstat -4 -p 389
 ldap     slapd      3261  7  tcp4   *:389                 *:*

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    2.1.3 Configuring the Client

   Install the net/openldap24-client port for the OpenLDAP libraries.
   The client machines will always have OpenLDAP libraries since that
   is all security/pam_ldap and net/nss_ldap support, at least for
   the moment.

   The configuration file for the OpenLDAP libraries is
   /usr/local/etc/openldap/ldap.conf. Edit this file to contain the
   following values:

 base dc=example,dc=org
 uri ldap://server.example.org/
 ssl start_tls
 tls_cacert /path/to/your/cacert.crt

     Note: It is important that your clients have access to
     cacert.crt, otherwise they will not be able to connect.

     Note: There are two files called ldap.conf. The first is this
     file, which is for the OpenLDAP libraries and defines how to
     talk to the server. The second is /usr/local/etc/ldap.conf, and
     is for pam_ldap.

   At this point you should be able to run ldapsearch -Z on the
   client machine; -Z means "use TLS". If you encounter an error,
   then something is configured wrong; most likely it is your
   certificates. Use openssl(1)'s s_client and s_server to ensure you
   have them configured and signed properly.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  2.2 Entries in the Database

   Authentication against an LDAP directory is generally accomplished
   by attempting to bind to the directory as the connecting user.
   This is done by establishing a "simple" bind on the directory with
   the user name supplied. If there is an entry with the uid equal to
   the user name and that entry's userPassword attribute matches the
   password supplied, then the bind is successful.

   The first thing we have to do is figure out is where in the
   directory our users will live.

   The base entry for our database is dc=example,dc=org. The default
   location for users that most clients seem to expect is something
   like ou=people,base, so that is what will be used here. However
   keep in mind that this is configurable.

   So the ldif entry for the people organizational unit will look
   like:

 dn: ou=people,dc=example,dc=org
 objectClass: top
 objectClass: organizationalUnit
 ou: people

   All users will be created as subentries of this organizational
   unit.

   Some thought might be given to the object class your users will
   belong to. Most tools by default will use people, which is fine if
   you simply want to provide entries against which to authenticate.
   However, if you are going to store user information in the LDAP
   database as well, you will probably want to use inetOrgPerson,
   which has many useful attributes. In either case, the relevant
   schemas need to be loaded in slapd.conf.

   For this example we will use the person object class. If you are
   using inetOrgPerson, the steps are basically identical, except
   that the sn attribute is required.

   To add a user testuser, the ldif would be:

 dn: uid=tuser,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org
 objectClass: person
 objectClass: posixAccount
 objectClass: shadowAccount
 objectClass: top
 uidNumber: 10000
 gidNumber: 10000
 homeDirectory: /home/tuser
 loginShell: /bin/csh
 uid: tuser
 cn: tuser

   I start my LDAP users' UIDs at 10000 to avoid collisions with
   system accounts; you can configure whatever number you wish here,
   as long as it's less than 65536.

   We also need group entries. They are as configurable as user
   entries, but we will use the defaults below:

 dn: ou=groups,dc=example,dc=org
 objectClass: top
 objectClass: organizationalUnit
 ou: groups

 dn: cn=tuser,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=org
 objectClass: posixGroup
 objectClass: top
 gidNumber: 10000
 cn: tuser

   To enter these into your database, you can use slapadd or ldapadd
   on a file containing these entries. Alternatively, you can use
   sysutils/ldapvi.

   The ldapsearch utility on the client machine should now return
   these entries. If it does, your database is properly configured to
   be used as an LDAP authentication server.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

3 Client Configuration

   The client should already have OpenLDAP libraries from Section
   2.1.3, but if you are installing several client machines you will
   need to install net/openldap24-client on each of them.

   FreeBSD requires two ports to be installed to authenticate against
   an LDAP server, security/pam_ldap and net/nss_ldap.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  3.1 Authentication

   security/pam_ldap is configured via /usr/local/etc/ldap.conf.

     Note: This is a different file than the OpenLDAP library
     functions' configuration file,
     /usr/local/etc/openldap/ldap.conf; however, it takes many of the
     same options; in fact it is a superset of that file. For the
     rest of this section, references to ldap.conf will mean
     /usr/local/etc/ldap.conf.

   Thus, we will want to copy all of our original configuration
   parameters from openldap/ldap.conf to the new ldap.conf. Once this
   is done, we want to tell security/pam_ldap what to look for on the
   directory server.

   We are identifying our users with the uid attribute. To configure
   this (though it is the default), set the pam_login_attribute
   directive in ldap.conf:

   Example 4. Setting pam_login_attribute

 pam_login_attribute uid

   With this set, security/pam_ldap will search the entire LDAP
   directory under base for the value uid=username. If it finds one
   and only one entry, it will attempt to bind as that user with the
   password it was given. If it binds correctly, then it will allow
   access. Otherwise it will fail.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    3.1.1 PAM

   PAM, which stands for "Pluggable Authentication Modules", is the
   method by which FreeBSD authenticates most of its sessions. To
   tell FreeBSD we wish to use an LDAP server, we will have to add a
   line to the appropriate PAM file.

   Most of the time the appropriate PAM file is /etc/pam.d/sshd, if
   you want to use SSH (remember to set the relevant options in
   /etc/ssh/sshd_config, otherwise SSH will not use PAM).

   To use PAM for authentication, add the line

 auth  sufficient  /usr/local/lib/pam_ldap.so  no_warn

   Exactly where this line shows up in the file and which options
   appear in the fourth column determine the exact behavior of the
   authentication mechanism; see pam.d(5)

   With this configuration you should be able to authenticate a user
   against an LDAP directory. PAM will perform a bind with your
   credentials, and if successful will tell SSH to allow access.

   However it is not a good idea to allow every user in the directory
   into every client machine. With the current configuration, all
   that a user needs to log into a machine is an LDAP entry.
   Fortunately there are a few ways to restrict user access.

   ldap.conf supports a pam_groupdn directive; every account that
   connects to this machine needs to be a member of the group
   specified here. For example, if you have

 pam_groupdn cn=servername,ou=accessgroups,dc=example,dc=org

   in ldap.conf, then only members of that group will be able to log
   in. There are a few things to bear in mind, however.

   Members of this group are specified in one or more memberUid
   attributes, and each attribute must have the full distinguished
   name of the member. So memberUid: someuser will not work; it must
   be:

 memberUid: uid=someuser,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org

   Additionally, this directive is not checked in PAM during
   authentication, it is checked during account management, so you
   will need a second line in your PAM files under account. This will
   require, in turn, every user to be listed in the group, which is
   not necessarily what we want. To avoid blocking users that are not
   in LDAP, you should enable the ignore_unknown_user attribute.
   Finally, you should set the ignore_authinfo_unavail option so that
   you are not locked out of every computer when the LDAP server is
   unavailable.

   Your pam.d/sshd might then end up looking like this:

   Example 5. Sample pam.d/sshd

 auth            required        pam_nologin.so          no_warn
 auth            sufficient      pam_opie.so             no_warn no_fake_prompts
 auth            requisite       pam_opieaccess.so       no_warn allow_local
 auth            sufficient      /usr/local/lib/pam_ldap.so      no_warn
 auth            required        pam_unix.so             no_warn try_first_pass

 account         required        pam_login_access.so
 account         required        /usr/local/lib/pam_ldap.so      no_warn ignore_authinfo_unavail ignore_unknown_user

     Note: Since we are adding these lines specifically to
     pam.d/sshd, this will only have an effect on SSH sessions. LDAP
     users will be unable to log in at the console. To change this
     behavior, examine the other files in /etc/pam.d and modify them
     accordingly.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  3.2 Name Service Switch

   NSS is the service that maps attributes to names. So, for example,
   if a file is owned by user 1001, an application will query NSS for
   the name of 1001, and it might get bob or ted or whatever the
   user's name is.

   Now that our user information is kept in LDAP, we need to tell NSS
   to look there when queried.

   The net/nss_ldap port does this. It uses the same configuration
   file as security/pam_ldap, and should not need any extra
   parameters once it is installed. Instead, what is left is simply
   to edit /etc/nsswitch.conf to take advantage of the directory.
   Simply replace the following lines:

 group: compat
 passwd: compat

   with

 group: files ldap
 passwd: files ldap

   This will allow you to map usernames to UIDs and UIDs to
   usernames.

   Congratulations! You should now have working LDAP authentication.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  3.3 Caveats

   Unfortunately, as of the time this was written FreeBSD did not
   support changing user passwords with passwd(1). Because of this,
   most administrators are left to implement a solution themselves. I
   provide some examples here. Note that if you write your own
   password change script, there are some security issues you should
   be made aware of; see Section 4.3

   Example 6. Shell script for changing passwords

 #!/bin/sh

 stty -echo
 read -p "Old Password: " oldp; echo
 read -p "New Password: " np1; echo
 read -p "Retype New Password: " np2; echo
 stty echo

 if [ "$np1" != "$np2" ]; then
   echo "Passwords do not match."
   exit 1
 fi

 ldappasswd -D uid="$USER",ou=people,dc=example,dc=org \
   -w "$oldp" \
   -a "$oldp" \
   -s "$np1"

     Caution: This script does hardly any error checking, but more
     important it is very cavalier about how it stores your
     passwords. If you do anything like this, at least adjust the
     security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl value:

 # sysctl security.bsd.see_other_uids=0.

   A more flexible (and probably more secure) approach can be used by
   writing a custom program, or even a web interface. The following
   is part of a Ruby library that can change LDAP passwords. It sees
   use both on the command line, and on the web.

   Example 7. Ruby script for changing passwords

 require 'ldap'
 require 'base64'
 require 'digest'
 require 'password' # ruby-password

 ldap_server = "ldap.example.org"
 luser = "uid=#{ENV['USER']},ou=people,dc=example,dc=org"

 # get the new password, check it, and create a salted hash from it
 def get_password
   pwd1 = Password.get("New Password: ")
   pwd2 = Password.get("Retype New Password: ")

   raise if pwd1 != pwd2
   pwd1.check # check password strength

   salt = rand.to_s.gsub(/0\./, '')
   pass = pwd1.to_s
   hash = "{SSHA}"+Base64.encode64(Digest::SHA1.digest("#{pass}#{salt}")+salt).chomp!
   return hash
 end

 oldp = Password.get("Old Password: ")
 newp = get_password

 # We'll just replace it.  That we can bind proves that we either know
 # the old password or are an admin.

 replace = LDAP::Mod.new(LDAP::LDAP_MOD_REPLACE | LDAP::LDAP_MOD_BVALUES,
                         "userPassword",
                         [newp])

 conn = LDAP::SSLConn.new(ldap_server, 389, true)
 conn.set_option(LDAP::LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, 3)
 conn.bind(luser, oldp)
 conn.modify(luser, [replace])

   Although not guaranteed to be free of security holes (the password
   is kept in memory, for example) this is cleaner and more flexible
   than a simple sh script.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

4 Security Considerations

   Now that your machines (and possibly other services) are
   authenticating against your LDAP server, this server needs to be
   protected at least as well as /etc/master.passwd would be on a
   regular server, and possibly even more so since a broken or
   cracked LDAP server would break every client service.

   Remember, this section is not exhaustive. You should continually
   review your configuration and procedures for improvements.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  4.1 Setting attributes read-only

   Several attributes in LDAP should be read-only. If left writable
   by the user, for example, a user could change his uidNumber
   attribute to 0 and get root access!

   To begin with, the userPassword attribute should not be
   world-readable. By default, anyone who can connect to the LDAP
   server can read this attribute. To disable this, put the following
   in slapd.conf:

   Example 8. Hide passwords

 access to dn.subtree="ou=people,dc=example,dc=org"
   attrs=userPassword
   by self write
   by anonymous auth
   by * none

 access to *
   by self write
   by * read

   This will disallow reading of the userPassword attribute, while
   still allowing users to change their own passwords.

   Additionally, you'll want to keep users from changing some of
   their own attributes. By default, users can change any attribute
   (except for those which the LDAP schemas themselves deny changes),
   such as uidNumber. To close this hole, modify the above to

   Example 9. Read-only attributes

 access to dn.subtree="ou=people,dc=example,dc=org"
   attrs=userPassword
   by self write
   by anonymous auth
   by * none

 access to attrs=homeDirectory,uidNumber,gidNumber
   by * read

 access to *
   by self write
   by * read

   This will stop users from being able to masquerade as other users.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  4.2 Root account definition

   Often the root or manager account for the LDAP service will be
   defined in the configuration file. OpenLDAP supports this, for
   example, and it works, but it can lead to trouble if slapd.conf is
   compromised. It may be better to use this only to bootstrap
   yourself into LDAP, and then define a root account there.

   Even better is to define accounts that have limited permissions,
   and omit a root account entirely. For example, users to can add or
   remove user accounts are added to one group, but they cannot
   themselves change the membership of this group. Such a security
   policy would help mitigate the effects of a leaked password.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    4.2.1 Creating a management group

   Say you want your IT department to be able to change home
   directories for users, but you don't want all of them to be able
   to add or remove users. The way to do this is to add a group for
   these admins:

   Example 10. Creating a management group

 dn: cn=homemanagement,dc=example,dc=org
 objectClass: top
 objectClass: posixGroup
 cn: homemanagement
 gidNumber: 121 # required for posixGroup
 memberUid: uid=tuser,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org
 memberUid: uid=user2,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org

   And then change the permissions attributes in slapd.conf:

   Example 11. ACLs for a home directory management group

 access to dn.subtree="ou=people,dc=example,dc=org"
   attr=homeDirectory
   by dn="cn=homemanagement,dc=example,dc=org"
   dnattr=memberUid write

   Now tuser and user2 can change other users' home directories.

   In this example we've given a subset of administrative power to
   certain users without giving them power in other domains. The idea
   is that soon no single user account has the power of a root
   account, but every power root had is had by at least one user. The
   root account then becomes unnecessary and can be removed.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  4.3 Password storage

   By default OpenLDAP will store the value of the userPassword
   attribute as it stores any other data: in the clear. Most of the
   time it is base 64 encoded, which provides enough protection to
   keep an honest administrator from knowing your password, but
   little else.

   It is a good idea, then, to store passwords in a more secure
   format, such as SSHA (salted SHA). This is done by whatever
   program you use to change users' passwords.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

                             A. Useful Aids

   There are a few other programs that might be useful, particularly
   if you have many users and do not want to configure everything
   manually.

   security/pam_mkhomedir is a PAM module that always succeeds; its
   purpose is to create home directories for users which do not have
   them. If you have dozens of client servers and hundreds of users,
   it is much easier to use this and set up skeleton directories than
   to prepare every home directory.

   sysutils/cpu is a pw(8)-like utility that can be used to manage
   users in the LDAP directory. You can call it directly, or wrap
   scripts around it. It can handle both TLS (with the -x flag) and
   SSL (directly).

   sysutils/ldapvi is a great utility for editing LDAP values in an
   LDIF-like syntax. The directory (or subsection of the directory)
   is presented in the editor chosen by the EDITOR environment
   variable. This makes it easy to enable large-scale changes in the
   directory without having to write a custom tool.

   security/openssh-portable has the ability to contact an LDAP
   server to verify SSH keys. This is extremely nice if you have many
   servers and do not want to copy your public keys across all of
   them.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

                    B. OpenSSL Certificates For LDAP

   If you are hosting two or more LDAP servers, you will probably not
   want to use self-signed certificates, since each client will have
   to be configured to work with each certificate. While this is
   possible, it is not nearly as simple as creating your own
   certificate authority, and signing your servers' certificates with
   that.

   The steps here are presented as they are with very little attempt
   at explaining what is going on-further explanation can be found in
   openssl(1) and its friends.

   To create a certificate authority, we simply need a self-signed
   certificate and key. The steps for this again are

   Example B-1. Creating a certificate

 % openssl genrsa -out root.key 1024
 % openssl req -new -key root.key -out root.csr
 % openssl x509 -req -days 1024 -in root.csr -signkey root.key -out root.crt

   These will be your root CA key and certificate. You will probably
   want to encrypt the key and store it in a cool, dry place; anyone
   with access to it can masquerade as one of your LDAP servers.

   Next, using the first two steps above create a key
   ldap-server-one.key and certificate signing request
   ldap-server-one.csr. Once you sign the signing request with
   root.key, you will be able to use ldap-server-one.* on your LDAP
   servers.

     Note: Do not forget to use the fully qualified domain name for
     the "common name" attribute when generating the certificate
     signing request; otherwise clients will reject a connection with
     you, and it can be very tricky to diagnose.

   To sign the key, use -CA and -CAkey instead of -signkey:

   Example B-2. Signing as a certificate authority

 % openssl x509 -req -days 1024 \
 -in ldap-server-one.csr -CA root.crt -CAkey root.key \
 -out ldap-server-one.crt

   The resulting file will be the certificate that you can use on
   your LDAP servers.

   Finally, for clients to trust all your servers, distribute
   root.crt (the certificate, not the key!) to each client, and
   specify it in the TLSCACertificateFile directive in ldap.conf.

     --------------------------------------------------------------
