[Go-essp-tech] resolution on securing opendap aggregations via ESGF

[stephen.pascoe at stfc.ac.uk]

I'm with Estani on this.  Authorisation decisions are best decoupled from the application where possible.  Phil is on leave today but I'm sure he'd say the same thing and give much more detailed reasoning.  

I think the catalogue already mixes slightly too much information together: location-independent file metadata and location-specific service information.  If we add access control it becomes too tightly coupled.

Stephen.

---
Stephen Pascoe  +44 (0)1235 445980
Centre of Environmental Data Archival
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Oxford, Didcot OX11 0QX, UK


-----Original Message-----
From: go-essp-tech-bounces at ucar.edu [mailto:go-essp-tech-bounces at ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Estanislao Gonzalez
Sent: 21 May 2011 09:30
To: Cinquini, Luca (3880)
Cc: go-essp-tech at ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [Go-essp-tech] resolution on securing opendap aggregations via ESGF

Hi,

In my opinion we shouldn't encode the access restriction in the catalog 
for these reasons:
1) Changing the access would involved re-publishing the files. (this 
will be done for instance when QC L2 is reached CMIP5 Research -> CMIP5 
Commercial). And think about what would happen if we want to change the 
access restriction in a couple of years... we should publish everything 
again, and that would involve quite some effort to understand the 
procedure again...
2) I'm not sure of this, but I fear TDS security cannot handle multiple 
roles. Right now you can publish to as many roles as required, and read 
and write access is kept separately. This would involve extending the 
TDS capabilities.
3) There could be potential inconsistencies if the authorization service 
is detached from datanode (like with the gateway right now) and the 
publisher alters the role but forgets to cascade the changes to the 
authorizing service (which would proceed according to the last harvested 
info)
4) And last but not least, I'm not sure we want to mix administration 
with publication. The publisher should only care about making data 
available, the administrator should organize this and be responsible for 
the security.

So basically I don't agree :-) Although I do think, if required, we 
could change "esg-user" for "esgf-controlled" if it's more intuitive.

My 2c anyways,
Estani

Am 20.05.2011 19:17, schrieb Cinquini, Luca (3880):
> Hi,
> 	a few points again on the issue of securing opendap aggregations served by the TDS with ESGF filters:
>
> o There's a new release of the ESGF security filters (esg-orp 1.1.2) that maps the TDS request URI to the dataset ID, and should solve this problem. You can experiment with the JPL test TDS server:
>
> http://test-datanode.jpl.nasa.gov/thredds/catalog.html
>
> where the AIRS dataset (and aggregations) is secured, the MLS is not.
>
> o Now the data node authorization filter will correctly identify the aggregation as secured, and call the configured authorization service. Currently, the p2p Node authorization service can be configured to allow authorization based on URL matching, so it will work. The gateway authorization service will have to implement its own logic to establish authorization.
>
> o Finally, I am wondering if we shouldn't change the way we encode authorization in thredds catalogs. Right now, we use restrictAccess="esg-user" for ALL collections, but should we consider about encoding the proper required access control attribute instead, for example restrictAccess="CMIP5 Research" ? Something to think about - there are prons and cons about this - it's all a question on wether the access control belongs in the catalog (and can be harvested for searching...) or not.
>
> thanks, Luca
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-- 
Estanislao Gonzalez

Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie (MPI-M)
Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) - German Climate Computing Centre
Room 108 - Bundesstrasse 45a, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany

Phone:   +49 (40) 46 00 94-126
E-Mail:  gonzalez at dkrz.de

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