plone.session 4.0.1

Session based auth tkt authentication for Zope

Overview

plone.session implements secure session management for Zope sites.

In its default configuration plone.session uses an HMAC SHA-256 secure cryptographic hash to authenticate sessions. The hash is generated using the userid and a secret stored in the PAS plugin. Otherwise, the cookie format is identical to that of Apache’s mod_auth_tkt. For single sign on with the original mod_auth_tkt or another compatible implementation, set the mod_auth_tkt property to true. This invokes an MD5 based double hashing scheme. You will need to use the same secret across all servers.

This has several advantages over other session management systems:

• passwords are not sent to the server in a cookie on every request, as is done by the Cookie Auth Helper

• it does not require any ZODB write for sessions, as is needed by the Session Crumbler. This allows it to scale very well.

• it allows you to invalidate all existing authentication cookies for users by updating the secret.

• The cookie is only valid for the period specified by the timeout property.

There are some downsides to this approach:

• if a user’s password is changed or disabled session identifiers will continue to work, making it hard to lock out individual users.

• a user must have cookies enabled.

A session cookie is used to track sessions; that means that as long as a user keeps his browser open (and does not explicitly log out) the session remains open until the timeout limit is reached. This can be changed by setting the timeout property of the plugin to the number of seconds the cookie should remain valid after the moment of login.

plone.session does not excuse you from setting up TLS (aka HTTPS) for your site.

tktauth.py implements the core mod_auth_tkt functionality. It is self-contained and may be of useful to other frameworks.

Using plone.session

plone.session only takes care of handling sessions for already authenticated users. This means it can not be used stand-alone: you need to have another PAS plugin, such as the standard Cookie Auth Helper to take care of authentication.

After a user has been authenticated plone.session can take over via the PAS credentials update mechanism.

Configuration options

To enable logins between sites or other mod_auth_tkt systems, set the shared secret through the Zope Management Interface. You can manage the plone.keyring secrets through the same page.

The following properties may be set through the Properties tab:

Cookie validity timeout (in seconds)

After this, the session is invalid and the user must login again. Set to 0 for the cookie to remain valid indefinitely. Note that when the user folder has caching enabled, cookie validity may not be checked on every request.

Refresh interval (in seconds, -1 to disable refresh)

This controls the refresh CSS max-age (see below.)

Use mod_auth_tkt compatible hashing algorithm

Compatibility with other implementations, but at the cost of using a weaker hashing algorithm.

Cookie name

Which cookie to use. This must also be set on the credentials_cookie_auth plugin.

Cookie lifetime (in days)

This makes the cookie persistent across opening and closing the browser.

Cookie domain (blank for default)

A cookie may be shared across www1.example.com and www2.example.com by setting the cookie domain to .example.com.

Cookie path

What path the cookie is set valid (defaults to /).

Ticket refresh

To enable short validity timeouts you must ensure that the cookie is regularly updated. One option is to put mod_auth_tkt in front of your site and set a TktAuthTimeoutRefresh. As of plone.session 3.1, an independent javascript solution is also supplied, installable as an optional add-on in Plone.

Theory of operation

The optional add-on installs a css resource which updates the cookie when loaded. This allows the cookie to be updated every time a page is loaded. While this CSS cannot cached by proxy servers, it may be cached for a time on the client. By controlling the max-age of the CSS resource, it is possible to control how often the browser actually fetches the CSS and hence how often the cookie is updated.

With short timeouts (15 or 30 minutes say), a user may not have loaded a new page before their cookie becomes invalid. A javascript is included which polls the cookie refresh CSS periodically while the user is active on the page (key presses or mouse moves.) If the refresh CSS max-age has passed, then the browser will refetch the CSS and the cookie will be updated. The poll interval may be configured on the refresh CSS query string minutes parameter, with the default being 5 minutes.

Ticket removal

When login sessions are shared across domains, it can be helpful to log users out of all domains when they log out of a Plone site. Load the pseudo CSS http://example.com/portal_path/acl_users/session/remove?type=css on the /logged_out page for ticket removal.

Single Sign On with IIS

For intranet setups with users on a Windows domain, it’s possible to configure IIS with Integrated Windows Authentication to act as an external login provider, even for sites running on Linux/Unix servers.

Requirements

• You need a Microsoft Windows Server running IIS. Preferably Windows Server 2003 or a later version.

• The server must be a member of the Windows domain you want to authenticate users for. It does not need to be an Active Directory server itself.

• You site should use pas.plugins.ldap to use the same Active Directory as a user source.

Python

• The Windows server needs to have Python 2.7 and the Python Win 32 extensions build >=216 installed.

• Place a copy of tktauth.py (from plone/session of this package) into:

  C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\

• Follow these instructions on how to configure Python for IIS. In bullet point 2.d. use:

  Executable: "C:\Python27\python.exe -u %s %s"

  instead. This will ensure files are opened in universal newline mode. You can choose to only configure these settings for the specific web site and not the entire IIS. Adjust settings accordingly and create the web site first as detailed in the next chapter.

IIS

• Find and open the IIS management console.

• Create a new Web Site, by going into the Web Sites folder and using the right-click menu. You should get a wizard asking you for various questions:

  Description: SSO login service
  
  TCP port: 80
  
  Path: c:\Inetpub\sso
  
  Allow anonymous access to this Web site: <not checked>
  
  Permissions: Read, Run scripts, Execute

• If you are running IIS 6, you need to go to the Web Service Extensions folder and change Active Server Pages to be Allowed. Otherwise you will get rather unhelpful 404 Not Found errors for the asp scripts.

IIS script

• Copy the login.asp and test.asp scripts (from the iis-login folder of this package) into root path of the web site (for example C:Inetpubsso).

• You need to modify the SECRET constant found in the login.asp to the same shared secret set on plone.session’s Manage secrets tab.

• Modify the ALLOWED_SITES constant in login.asp to include the URLs of your Plone sites.

• Modify the DEFAULT_NEXT constant in login.asp to refer the the URL of logged_in on one of your Plone sites.

• Access http://LOGONSERVER/test.asp to confirm access permissions are correctly configured.

Configuring browsers to allow automatic logon

Browsers must be configured to trust the logon server for user authentication data to be sent automatically.

By default, Internet Explorer sends logon information to servers within the Intranet Zone, so long as the site is accessed using it’s intranet name (http://LOGONSERVER/login.asp). If the site is accessed using a fully qualified domain name or IP address, it must be explicitly added to the list of trusted sites.

Firefox configuration information may be found in this article.

Configuring your Plone site

Ensure that you have setup authentication to Active Directory and that you can login with the your current Windows user name.

Set the following configuration options through the Zope interface:

• In /Plone/acl_users/session. On the Manage secrets tab set a shared secret.

• In /Plone/portal_properties/site_properties set external_login_url to http://LOGONSERVER/login.asp.

• In /Plone/portal_properties/site_properties set external_login_iframe to true.

Note for developers testing this under Windows XP

• IIS may be installed as an additional component using the Windows XP installation CD.

• The IIS management console can be located at:

  Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services

• The pywin32 installer setup IIS sufficiently for me not to need to follow the instructions on how to configure Python for IIS.

• I could not find how to setup a separate site, so placed the asp scripts directly in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot - the Default Web Site

• From the IIS management console, select “Default Web Site”. You should see login.asp and test.asp in the right hand pane. With each file, right-click Properties. On the File Security tab click Edit… on Anonymous access and authentication control. Uncheck Anonymous access and check Basic authentication (to be used as a fallback) and Integrated Windows authentication.

• Access http://localhost/test.asp to confirm IIS authentication works as expected.

• Set the secret in login.asp and Manage secrets of plone.session.

• Set SITE_URL in login.asp to http://localhost:8080/Plone (or whatever the address of your site is).

• Add a Plone user with the same name as your Windows login name (e.g. Administrator), this avoids setting up Active Directory.

• Follow the section above to configure your Plone site, but set Login Form to http://localhost/login.asp.

Changelog

4.0.1 (2023-01-30)

Internal:

• Update code to current Plone meta standards. [gforcada, maurits] (#1)

4.0.0 (2022-12-02)

Bug fixes:

• Final release for Plone 6.0.0 (#600)

4.0.0b2 (2022-08-31)

New features:

• Creating per-user keyrings in order to have session invalidation on log-out (server-side logout). [david-batranu] (#26)

• Cookie attribute SameSite is set to “Lax”. (#29)

4.0.0b1 (2022-07-22)

Bug fixes:

• Update the plone-session bundle to depend on the plone bundle instead of the jquery bundle, which no longer exists. [davisagli] (#27)

4.0.0a1 (2022-04-08)

Breaking changes:

• Register single resource bundle for Plone 6 for our optional refresh support. An upgrade step for this is in plone.app.upgrade, otherwise we leave partial bundles behind. Removed our own upgrade step and profile, as they are not needed when migrating from Plone 5.2. [maurits] (#24)

3.7.5 (2020-06-24)

Bug fixes:

• Fix hard dependency indirection with Products.CMFPlone (plone.session must not import from it). [jensens] (#20)

• Only setup a session when the current user is the requested user. [maurits] (#57)

3.7.4 (2020-04-22)

Bug fixes:

• Minor packaging updates. (#1)

3.7.3 (2019-04-29)

Bug fixes:

• Fix nameclash resulting in ImportWarning by renaming profiles.py to hiddenprofiles.py. [jensens] (#16)

3.7.2 (2019-02-13)

Bug fixes:

• Remove last traces of ZopeTestCase. [gforcada] (#14)

3.7.1 (2018-09-28)

Bug fixes:

• Python3 compatibility [ale-rt, pbauer]

3.7.0 (2018-04-03)

New features:

• Use Resource Registry for JS/CSS registration [jensens]

Bug fixes:

• Fixes #11: Pseudo CSS-file is not loaded anymore in merged legacy bundle. Now optional JS based auto-refresh support is working again. [jensens]

• Modernize README. [jensens]

3.6.2 (2018-02-02)

Bug fixes:

• Hardening default timeout of session. This solves Plone security internal issue #126 (severity low, non-critical). Session timeout is now the same as in mod_auth_tkt: 2h. This follows the recommendation of the German BSI (federal office for security in the information technology). See https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Internetsicherheit/isi_web_server_checkliste_Plone.pdf For existing sites this can be adjusted at https://HOST/acl_users/session/manage_propertiesForm The Plone Security Team follows the BSI and recommends administrators to change the setting in their existing Plone sites. [jensens]

• Add Python 2 / 3 compatibility [vincero]

3.6.1 (2016-12-02)

Bug fixes:

• Hide uninstall profile in install listings. [jensens]

3.6.0 (2016-05-26)

New:

• Added uninstall profile. [maurits]

3.5.6 (2015-07-27)

• Cleanup: Pep8, plone style conventions, better readbility. [jensens]

3.5.5 (2015-04-29)

• Default encoding for createTicket to be compatible with unicode user_id [puittenbroek]

3.5.4 (2015-03-21)

• Move tests from PloneTestCase to plone.app.testing. [tomgross]

3.5.3 (2013-03-05)

• Revert accidental change to default encoding for validateTicket. [davisagli]

3.5.2 (2012-12-09)

• Use constant time comparison when validating tickets. This is part of the fix for https://plone.org/products/plone/security/advisories/20121106/23 [davisagli]

3.5.1 - 2012-11-02

• Handle encoded strings for userids. [elro]

• Add MANIFEST.in. [WouterVH]

• Fix for Python 2.4 under 64bit Mac OS generating incorrect mod_auth_tkt digests [MatthewWilkes]

3.5 - 2011-03-19

• Disable secure cookie in development mode, to ease local testing. [hannosch]

3.4 - 2011-03-02

• Added metadata.xml to the default profile. [vincentfretin]

3.3 - 2010-12-30

• Update login.asp to match Plone 4.1 SSO login form functionality. [elro]

• Fix remove. [elro]

3.2 - 2010-12-14

• Remove external_login method, the normal logged_in script can be used instead. [elro]

• Fix refresh. [elro]

3.1 - 2010-11-11

• Remove SessionPlugin.validate(ticket) method, it was not required. [elro]

3.1b1 - 2010-10-18

• Session refresh. [elro]

• SessionPlugin.validate(ticket) method. [elro]

• Close <input> tags properly (chameleon compatibility) [swampmonkey]

3.0 - 2010-07-18

• Update package metadata. [hannosch]

3.0b5 - 2010-06-13

• Make sure to load the right meta ZCML. [hannosch]

• Avoid deprecation warnings under Zope 2.13. [hannosch]

• Removed dependency on GPL licensed Products.PloneTestCase. [hannosch]

3.0b4 - 2010-05-23

• Make the secure option of cookies configurable. This allows to restrict cookies to HTTPS connections alone. This closes http://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/7897. [pfurman, hannosch]

• Use the standard libraries doctest module, instead of the deprecated one from zope.testing. [hannosch]

• Marked the session cookie as HTTPOnly. [hannosch]

• PEP8 cleanup. [hannosch]

• Relicense as BSD following PF Board decision. http://lists.plone.org/pipermail/membership/2010-April/001123.html [elro]

3.0b3 - 2010-04-09

• Example IIS login form and documentation. This builds on work by Hanno and I at Jarn for Centrepoint. [elro]

• Support authentication by an external form, perhaps one running on an IIS server with Integrated Windows Authentication. [elro]

3.0b2 - 2010-03-09

• Prefix setupSession with underscore, the method should be unavailable TTW. [elro]

• Catch a ComponentLookupError in authenticateCredentials. [elro]

3.0b1 - 2010-03-05

• Add back the hash management UI with added functionality to set shared secret. [elro]

• Add properties for cookie domain and ticket validity timeout. [elro]

• Use mod_auth_tkt format cookies to give us a session validity timeout. By default we use a more secure HMAC SHA-256 hashing scheme. An MD5 based scheme compatible with other mod_auth_tkt implementations is optional. [elro]

• Remove the source component indirection. [elro]

3.0a2 - 2009-11-13

• Remove hash management UI which had been accidentally re-merged. [davisagli]

3.0a1 - 2009-04-04

• Avoid deprecation warning for the sha module in Python 2.6. [hannosch]

• Declare test dependencies in an extra. [hannosch]

• Specify package dependencies. [hannosch]

• Fixed the remaining tests to work with the new keyring backend. [hannosch]

• Fixed a component lookup call in the HashSession source. [davisagli, hannosch]

• Update default (hash) session source to use plone.keyring to manage the secrets. [wichert]

2.1 - 2009-02-04

• Protect the setupSession call with the ManageUsers permission. Fixes possible privilege escalation. [maurits]

• Make the cookie lifetime configurable. Patch by Rok Garbas. Fixes http://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/7248 [wichert, garbas]

2.0 - 2008-07-08

• Fix CSRF protection for managing server secrets via the Plone session plugin for PAS. Fixes http://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/8176 [witsch]

1.2 - 2007-02-15

• Use the binascii base64 methods to encode/decode the session cookie. This prevents newlines being inserted in long cookies. [wichert]

1.1 - 2007-09-11

• Use the userid instead of the login name in session identifiers. This has the side-effect of working around a bug in PAS which caused us to mix up users when the login name used was an inexact match for another login name. [wichert]

1.0 - 2007-08-15

• First stable release [wichert]