<<if: ZXIDBOOK>>
<<else: >>Building a Circle-of-Trust Using ZXID
#####################################
<<author: Sampo Kellomäki (sampo@iki.fi)>>
<<cvsid: $Id: zxid-cot.pd,v 1.6 2010-01-08 02:10:09 sampo Exp $>>
<<class: article!a4paper!!ZXID-COT 01>>
<<define: ZXDOC=Building Circles-of-Trust using ZXID>>

<<abstract:

ZXID.org Identity Management toolkit implements standalone SAML 2.0 and
Liberty ID-WSF 2.0 stacks. This document explains creating CoT.

>>

<<maketoc: 1>>

1 Introduction
==============

ZXID, out of box, starts with default URL (Entity ID), metadata for
couple of test servers, and demo certificates already configured. The
Auto-CoT feature that automatically adds IdPs to the Circle-of-Trust
is enabled.

These are good settings for a demo, but if you want to run any serious
operation, you will need to address the certificates, trust, and
admission of partners to the circle of trust yourself. You will also
need to get others to add your site to their configuration.

When done for high value or liability services, all of this becomes
rather serious business and you may want to hire a consultant to
help getting it all right.

(One day I hope this documentation is so good that no consultant
is needed. Right now this is just a place holder.)

If you are setting up zxididp, see zxid-idp.pd for more specific
instructions.

1.1 Other documents
-------------------

<<doc-inc.pd>>

2 Metadata of Your Own Site
===========================

Others can obtain the metadata of your site by accessing
a URL that is the entity ID of your site, for example:

  https://sp1.zxid.org/zxidhlo?o=B

If they want a file, you can capture the output of the http
operation in a file, for example

  curl https://sp1.zxid.org/zxidhlo?o=B >mymeta.xml
  wget -O mymeta.xml https://sp1.zxid.org/zxidhlo?o=B

or just access the URL with web browser and save the page.

2 zxcot - tool
==============

  Usage: zxcot [options] [dir]
       zxcot -a [options] [dir] <meta.xml
       curl https://site.com/metadata.xml | zxcot -a [options] [dir]
       zxcot -g https://site.com/metadata.xml [options] [dir]
       zxcot -p https://site.com/metadata.xml
  [dir]            CoT directory. Default /var/zxid/cot
  -a               Add metadata from stdin
  -g URL           Do HTTP(S) GET to URL and add as metadata (if compiled w/libcurl)
  -n               Dryrun. Do not actually add the metadata. Instead print it to stdout.
  -s               Swap columns, for easier sorting by URL
  -p ENTID         Print sha1 name corresponding to an entity ID.
  -v               Verbose messages.
  -q               Be extra quiet.
  -d               Turn on debugging.
  -h               This help message
  --               End of options


3 Auto-CoT Feature and Well Known Location Method
=================================================

Automatic Circle-of-Trust (Auto-CoT) feature allows other parties
metadata to be automatically fetched on the fly as needed. The
fetch is made by using the entity ID of the other party as
a URL. This is known as the Well Known Location (WKL) method,
see [SAML2meta] section 4.1 "Publication and Resolution via Well-Known Location",
p.29, for normative description of this method. Auto-CoT
makes setting up the Circle-of-Trust very easy, but has its
drawbacks: anyone can join, connectivity between entities
is needed, and WKL method needs to be supported and enabled in the
partner's server.

When ZXID ships, it has Auto-CoT enabled. To disable Auto-CoT,
you need to set in your configuration string or file

  MD_FETCH=0

9 Circle-of-Trust: Create a Federation with Other Partners
==========================================================

<<fi: >>

TBD - This chapter to be written

10 Certificates and PKI Trust
=============================

*** TBD - This chapter should be elaborated to be a certificate tutorial with
following contents:

* Intro to certs and private keys
* Generating self signed cert
* Generating certificate signing request and using it to obtain
  commercially issued cert
* Installing root certs so you can recognize other people's certs
* Client TLS considerations

For the time being, the short answer is that ZXID uses OpenSSL and
PEM format certificates. You can use same techniques as you would use for
Apache / mod_ssl for acquiring certificates.

You should NEVER password protect your private key. There will not
be any opportunity to supply the password. You should instead protect
your private key using Unix filesystem permissions. See OpenSSL.org
or modssl.org FAQs for further information, including how to remove
a password if you accidentally enabled it.

<<if: ZXIDBOOK>>
<<else: >>

97 FAQ extract
==============

See zxid-faq.pd for full story.

(*** These answers also appear in main FAQ in README.zxid)

97.9.2 Quick command for looking at certificate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes you get warning messages (in browser) or signature
validation errors (in IdP end) because the Subject field of the
certificate does not match your actual domain name. You can
check this with

  openssl x509 -text </var/zxid/pem/ssl-nopw-cert.pem | grep Subject:

If the domain name is different, then you need to obtain a certificate
with correct domain name, see next question.

97.9.3 Self signed certificate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ZXID ships with zxid.pem which gets by default copied to /var/zxid/pem
under various different names. This is fine for testing, but disastrous
for production or security sentitive use as the private key corresponding
to zxid.pem certificate is of public knowledge (it is distributed with
every copy of ZXID) - it offers no security and no non-repudiation
what-so-ever.

For production or security sensitive install you need to either

1. Obtain certificates from an official certification authority,
   usually a commercial one. ZXID uses same certificate format as
   Apache (i.e. the pem format), so aquiring certificates is easi. Or,

2. Generate your own certificate. The simplest case is a self signed
   certificate:

     openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -keyout pkey.pem -out cert.pem
     cat cert.pem pkey.pem >/var/zxid/pem/ssl-nopw-cert.pem

The cat step is there because you need to supply both certificate
and the private key in same file for ZXID to understand it.

> Warning: Although ZXID wants to see the private key in the same
> file as the certificate, you MUST NOT give this concatenated
> file to any outsider. Others have legitimate need to know your
> certificate, but they MUST NOT know your private key. If they
> ask, you should take special care to delete the private key from
> the file prior to giving it to them. Often those who need to
> get your certificate, actually need your metadata: just tell them
> to fetch it from the Well Known Location URL (i.e. the Entity ID
> of your SP). ZXID will never leak the private key to the metadata.


96 License
==========

Copyright (c) 2006-2009 Symlabs (symlabs@symlabs.com), All Rights Reserved.
Author: Sampo Kellomäki (sampo@iki.fi)

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

<<zxid-ref.pd>>

<<doc-end.pd>>
<<notapath: TCP/IP a.k.a xBSD/Unix n/a Perl/mod_perl PHP/mod_php Java/Tomcat>>
<<EOF: >>
<<fi: >>
