sspilib 0.5.0

SSPI API bindings for Python

Python SSPI Library

This library provides Python functions that wraps the Windows SSPI API. It is designed to be both a high and low level interface that other libraries can easily leverage to use with SSPI integration. The high level interface is under the sspilib namespace whereas the low-level interface is under the sspilib.raw interface.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+

More requirements are needed to compile the code from scratch but this library is shipped as a wheel so it isn't mandatory for installation.

Installation

Simply run:

pip install sspilib

To install from source run the following:

git clone https://github.com/jborean93/sspilib.git
python -m pip install build
python -m build
pip install dist/sspilib-*.whl

Development

To run the tests or make changes to this repo run the following:

git clone https://github.com/jborean93/sspilib.git
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pre-commit install

python -m pip install -e .

# Can compile the sspi extensions on an adhoc basis
# python setup.py build_ext --inplace

From there an editor like VSCode can be used to make changes and run the test suite. To recompile the Cython files after a change run the build_ext --inplace command.

If building on Linux or macOS, a version of libsspi from sspi-rs must be compiled with rust. A copy of libicuuc alongside its headers must be present during compile time. To compile sspi-rs, download the git repository and run the following.

cargo build \
    --package sspi-ffi \
    --release

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${PWD}/target/release"
export LIBRARY_PATH="${PWD}/target/release"

Structure

This library is merely a wrapper around the SSPI APIs. The high level API under sspilib exposes an easier to use Python API for SSPI. The functions under the sspilib.raw namespace expose the various SSPI functions under a more Pythonic snake_case format. For example the AcquireCredentialsHandle function is exposed as sspilib.raw.acquire_credentials_handle.

Errors are raised as a WindowsError which contains the error message as formatted by Windows and the error code. For non-Windows hosts there is a compatible sspilib.WindowsError class that is structured like the Windows only WindowsError builtin. Some of the objects and constants are exposed as Python classes/dataclasses/enums for ease of use. Please read through the docstring of the function that will be used to learn more about how to use them.

Client Authentication Example

Here is a basic example of how to use this library for client authentication:

import sspilib

cred = sspilib.UserCredential(
    "[e-mail]",
    "password",
)

ctx = sspilib.ClientSecurityContext(
    credential=cred,
    target_name="host/server.domain.com",
)

in_token = None
while not ctx.complete:
    out_token = ctx.step(in_token)
    if not out_token:
        break

    # exchange_with_server() is a function that sends the out_token to the
    # server we are authenticating with. How this works depends on the app
    # protocol being used, e.g. HTTP, sockets, LDAP, etc.
    in_token = exchange_with_server(out_token)

# Once authenticated we can wrap messages when talking to the server. The final
# message being sent is dependent on the application protocol
secret = b"secret data"

wrapped_secret = ctx.wrap(secret)
server_enc_resp = exchange_with_server(wrapped_secret)
server_resp = ctx.unwrap(server_enc_resp).data

The UserCredential supports more options, like selecting the authentication protocol used. The ClientSecurityContext requires the credentials to use and the Service Principal Name (SPN) of the target server. Other options can be used to control the context requested attributes, channel bindings, etc as needed. How the tokens and wrapped data is sent is dependent on the underlying protocols used, this example just shows when to exchange the data.

Non-Windows Support

While SSPI is a Windows only API, this package ships with manylinux2014_x86_64, macosx_x86_64, and macosx_arm64 compatible wheels that use sspi-rs. Support for this is experimental as all the authentication logic is contained in that external API. The interface for sspi-rs is exactly the same as SSPI on Windows so the same code should theoretically be possible. In saying this, compatibility with SSPI actual is not 100% there so use at your own risk.

It is recommended to use a library that wraps GSSAPI on non-Windows platforms like python-gssapi. There is no support for any other architectures on Linux except x86_64 and aarch64 (ARM64), and as sspi-rs only supports glibc it cannot be used with musl based distributions like Alpine.

Python Free-Threading (PEP 779)

This library supports Python Free-Threading and will build free-threading-compatible extension files if installed under a free-threading interpreter. Python 3.14t is tested in CI and a wheel will be created for 3.14t+. Python 3.13t is not officially tested or supported but may or may not work. There is limited testing for free-threading in this library and it does not aim to be thread safe out of the box. If you encounter any issues or problems with this scenario please raise an issue and we can look at possible options to fix this.