NB: This presentation was delivered at the Singapore Ruby Brigade meetup 7-Oct-2009 (hosted at wego.com)

Some things should just be banned on the interwebs..

.. pointless social “applications” ..

.. pointless social “applications” ..

.. twitter celebs ..

.. twitter celebs ..

.. custom login screens!

.. custom login screens!

What’s so bad about that?Security– Proliferation of

credentials unavoidably leads to greater risks

– Do sites hash my password?

PITA– Redundant entry of

registration details– Validation emails..

aargh!– Code bloat:

reset/forgot password flows

– Site developer’s need to be (should be!) security experts

Enterprise clients– Ideally want your site to treat employees as “verified

employees” not just part of the madding crowd– Public sites: still in its infancy. Belief: before long, enterprises

will clue in to this, and be “exporting” corporate credentials for use on the web. If your site supports this, you can win big.

End of days for“own the user identity”?

Consumers: already have (multiple) “identities”– Hypothesis: these days a reasonable assumption– Why should I jump thru hoops to create another just

so I can try your site?

Businesses: don’t really want their employees creating new “identities” on your site if it is for business purposes

– Compliance – no control or visibility of what employees are doing or information they are creating

– Data ownership – what happens when the employee leaves?

Or

“Why authentication and identity management is still worth talking

about”

Authorisation Options

Internal(username / password)

Sometimes there’s no choice

– No internet access– Legacy accounts

Special purpose– Admin or test users

for example

LDAP/AD

Intranet applicationsLegacy directories

Supports many providers, which don’t need to be known ahead of timeConsumer adoption has been relatively slow, although many users now have an OpenID (via Yahoo or Google)

– even though they don’t know this!

Criticised for being a little too “technical” for the average web citizen(!)

OAuth

Must tie to a specific provider ahead of timeAlso used as the basis of OpenSocial signed requestsGreat if you just want to target a specific community (e.g. build a twitter app)

A single-sign-on solution for web sitesAbstracts the authentication provider – you can support as many as JanRain supportNormalizes profile settings across providers (i.e. “email” is always “email”)

RPX by JanRain

SAML – WS* security mainly enterprise use, but now gaining some attention via openSSO2FA/3FA solutions – provider specific or custom integrated

Many others..

Authentication options in RailsInternal

(username/password)LDAP/AD

RPX by JanRain Many others..OAuth

Acts_as_authenticated

Restful_authentication

Clearance

Twitter_oauth

Openid_authentication

ActiveLDAP

acts_as_ldpa_authenticated

Ruby Net-LDAP

Rpx_now …Ruby oauth

OpenID

Or Authlogic

Internal(username/password)

LDAP/AD

RPX by JanRain

Many others..OAuth

Authlogic-oauth

Authlogic-ldap

Authlogic-oid

Authlogic_rpx

Authlogic (base)

Authlogic plugin X

Or use Authlogic“unobtrusive authentication”

No generator crudSmells like ActiveRecord

Plugin architecture

Using Authlogic_RPX

RPX Request Model

Link to sign-in ..chatter..

..chatter..

Post:token

Verify:token

(returns:profile info)

Authlogic_RPX-on-a-page

Enabling Authlogic_RPX

See the Authlogic RPX README for full details. It walks you through the steps for enabling Authlogic RPX:

1. Enable RPX for your user model2. Add RPX configuration for the Authlogic session model3. Add custom user profile mapping (optional)4. Add application controller helpers: current_user,

current_user_session5. Setup the Authlogic session controller6. Setup the Authlogic user controller7. Use view helpers to provide login links8. Allow users to "Add RPX" to existing accounts (optional)

In this presentation, we’ll touch on some of the main points…

Register your RPX app

Register your application at http://rpxnow.com – set it’s name and be assigned an API key, and select/configure the authentication providers:

Note: max 6 providers

with the free RPX account

Configure your project

In config/environment.rb – Set the RPX app name and API key:

Configure gems:

$ rake gems:installOnce setup, using Authlogic_RPX is almost identical to standard Authlogic

Two MVCs: session and user

Minimal models:

Simple helpers you define and control:– current_user– require_user (e.g. for before_filter)

Controllers – clean and sweet

[:post] create – this is a user “signing in”

Session controller

All this is optional branching logic, which you can tailor specifically for your application

successful save means authentication OK!

[:delete] destroy – this is a user “signing out”

Session controller

Access controls:

Registration form (optional):

Save registration (optional):

Edit my profile:

Show my profile:

Save my profile:

User controller

Note: sample is a controller that only lets users access their own information, but you can just as easily adapt this so they can list and see the public profile information of other users too.

Auto registration

Authlogic_RPX will “register” new users by default. For users this is great: registration is no more difficult than logging in.

– You can disable this in the session model:

UserSession model – profile mapping

When users auto-register, profile data from RPX is available to be inserted in the user's record on your site.

– Authlogic_rpx will map the username and email fields by default.

If you have other fields you want to map, you can provide your own implementation of the map_rpx_data method in the UserSession model

UserSession model – profile mapping

UserSession model – profile mapping

WARNING: any fields you map should NOT have constraints enforced at the database level.

– Authlogic_rpx will optimistically attempt to save the user record during registration, and violating a db constraint will cause the authentication/ registration to fail.

– You can/should enforce any required validations at the model level. This will allow the auto-registration to proceed, and the user can be given a chance to rectify the validation errors on your user profile page

If it is not acceptable in your application to have user records created with potential validation errors in auto-populated fields, you will need to override map_rpx_data and implement whatever special handling makes sense in your case.

RPX – the catch (or: why you might want to buy their pro service)

Today I sign-in with Tomorrow I use

these aren’t thesame identities!

We need identity mapping!– RPX paid options support “identity mapping”, but this is

currently not supported in Authlogic_RPX

Authlogic_RPX 1.1.0+ includes an internal identity mapping solution (it is optional)

Try it outLive Demonstration Site:

rails-authlogic-rpx-sample.heroku.com

Demonstration site source repository:github.com/tardate/rails-authlogic-rpx-sample

Take-aways

Getting authentication right is critical for your site’s success

– Lower the barrier-to-entry for consumer/personal users. Eliminate the need to create redundant “identities”!

– Business sites – make it possible for employees to use business identities “exported” via OpenID (for example), without the need for a specific agreement and integration to be in place

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Take-aways

Authlogic – leading authentication framework for rails (IMHO)

– Best even if you just want to do traditional username/password

– Unobtrusive– Makes it easy to switch or add

authentication options in future– One framework to learn – plugin the

most suitable authentication method for each specific project

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Take-aways

Authlogic_RPX – takes away the pain– Support diverse identity providers– Standard Authlogic - nothing special to do

except plug in your API key– Can be used as “RPX only”, or co-exist

with standard Authlogic username/password

Use it for:– Public sites + you just need authentication

services + want to give users the best opportunity to use existing credentials.

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Thank you!

Questions?

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Some References

Authlogic: http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic Authlogic_RPX: http://github.com/tardate/authlogic_rpx RPX: http://rpxnow.com OpenID: http://openid.net OAuth: http://oauth.net Singapore Ruby Brigade (SRB): http://groups.google.com/group/singapore-rb