Kerberos Client

This project allows making HTTP calls to a Kerberos protected server using SPNego/Negotiate protocol. It is heavily based on https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-security-kerberos/tree/master/spring-security-kerberos-samples/sec-server-client-auth.

The main differences are:

• Completely independent of Spring or Spring Security using KerberosHttpClient. Spring dependencies are only present in the project in order to execute it as Spring Boot application.
• That KerberosHttpClient allows HOST_BASED and USER_BASED GSSName generation for login to the Authentication Server. Besides, for host based names, the service type present in the SPN can be not only HTTP but any value (HTTP is hardcoded into the default implementation of SPNegoScheme)

Requirements

• Create a user (principal) in Windows Active Directory. In the Account tab set:

  • SERV/yourusername.domain.com as User logon name
  • yourusername as User logon name (pre-Windows 2000) if present

• In Windows, as Administrator, set an SPN for that user:

setspn -A SERV/yourusername.domain.com yourusername

• Then generate a keytab file:

ktpass /out C:\yourusername.keytab /mapuser [email protected] /princ SERV/[email protected] /pass yourpassword /kvno 0

• Install and configure Kerberos in the host machine. This an example of /etc/krb5.conf:

[libdefaults]
    default_realm = DOMAIN.COM
    default_tkt_enctypes = arcfour-hmac-md5 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5
    default_tgs_enctypes = arcfour-hmac-md5 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5
    ticket_lifetime = 24h
    forwardable = yes
    dns_lookup_kdc = false

[realms]
    DOMAIN.COM = {
        kdc = yourActiveDirectoryHost.domain.com
        default_domain = domain.com
    }

[domain_realm]
    .domain.com = DOMAIN.COM

[logging]
 krb5 = SYSLOG:
 default = FILE:/var/logs/krb5.log
 admin_server = FILE:/var/logs/krb5.log
 kdc = FILE:/var/logs/krb5.log

• Ensure the kdc (Windows Active Directory domain in this case) is accessible from the current host

Run the example

• Copy the yourusername.keytab into a location in the machine running the client. Put that location in this app config file application.yml along with the following:

• access-url: endpoint to access in the server. This has to contain a fully qualified domain name of the server host. This hostname has to be a user defined in the same Kerberos Realm / Domain Controller as the client if using HOST_BASED name strategy for GSS (i.e: yourusername.domain.com)
• user-principal: fully qualified SPN of the created user, i.e. SERV/[email protected]

• Launch Kerberos Server in a host named yourusername.domain.com if this client uses HOST_BASED name generation.

• Generate the JAR file:

./gradlew assemble

• Execute the client:

java -jar build/libs/kerberos-client-0.1.jar

• Config file application.yml can be overriden at execution time. Just provide a file with the same name in directory the previous command in executed from (not where the JAR lives) or give an extra command line attribute:

java -jar build/libs/kerberos-client-0.1.jar --spring.config.location=/path/to/propertiesFile.yml

Limitations

• Only HOST_NAME-based naming for principals/SPNs is supported at the moment. This requires a proper hostname in the server aligned with a user principal in AD.
• Only GET requests can be performed at the moment, returning a String response

Resources

• Using JGSS to generate and consume Kerberos/SPNEGO tokens here
• Simple example of high level Client/Server using GSS-API here
• More low level example of Client/Server, using mutual authentication checks here, here and here
• Spring Security Kerberos docs